Shift
by SJlikeslists
Summary: Being caught by population control had consequences that were more severe. (Maddy centric canon divergent AU)
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: _Terra Nova_ does not belong to me.

AN: Consider this an expansion of "Harsher Population Control" from the "Ways the Story Didn't Go" collection, but reading it first is not necessary.

The hallway leaves her feeling strangely agoraphobic as she trails after Dr. Yibbets. It is not particularly wide, but it must lead somewhere. The feeling that there is somewhere to go is strangely unsettling (and exhilarating as well) in the wake of her recent confinement. She tries very hard not to let any unease (or even something like hope) that she might be feeling manifest itself in her posture or on her face. The woman in front of her is chattering in her normal manner, but Rowle is following closely behind them (enough so that she is certain that he would step on her heels if she came to an abrupt stop). He is, as always, watching her closely - waiting for there to be something he can use against her. That has not changed; she is fairly certain that it never well. She does not think it will matter how much time she spends here - she will always be on her guard, and he will always be watching for a place of weakness in her armor.

Maddy is not certain what day (or night as she really has no way to be sure of the difference either) it is now that they have demanded that she follow them out of the door. It is the first time (to her knowledge) that they have extracted her from her cell. She only calls it that in her head of course. She does not have any reason to refer to the space out loud - the majority of the conversations to which she is exposed are decidedly one sided.

Both Rowle and Dr. Yibbets refer to the place as her room. The former does so in a sarcastic and somewhat snide manner designed to remind her that she is ultimately a prisoner in this place no matter the arrangements that are made or the niceties of the pretenses at which they play. The latter calls the place her room in a sickeningly sincere manner as if all teenage girls opt to dwell inside cubicles which have no handles on the interior of the door. This bothers her far more than any cutting verbal attempts at putting her in her place ever will.

She has had a lifetime of disgruntled peers to inoculate her against that sort of an attack. There is very little Rowle can say to provoke a reaction from her, but he seems the type that never grows bored with trying. They (the mysterious they that she is convinced is watching and pulling the strings behind the scenes) chose well when they set him up to play the part of "bad cop" in this scenario.

She brushes the fingers of her right hand across the mostly healed bruise on her left arm as she takes in the details of the hallway down which they are walking as best she can without making a show of turning her head. It reminds her that they are willing to be flexible to a point in how they arrive at their destination, but they intend to arrive there all the same. They have never told her what they gave her when she was unconscious. They have never mentioned that she was unconscious at all. She pieced it together herself from the clues of suddenly waking clear-headed when she knew that she had been far too muddled for sleep alone to have reversed the situation and the bruise on her arm that her extensive reading of medical texts both modern and archaic (brought on by a compulsion to understand what her mother did every day) told her was likely caused by the placement of an IV. She would have remembered a piece of plastic tubing inhabiting her vein if she had been aware for any part of it. The only thing outside of herself that had been different in her cell was the disappearance of the little plastic cup of pills that had been waiting for her in front of the slot in the door.

She might be overreaching (desperately grasping at something to make her feel as if she had some semblance of control over some minute part of the situation) to consider the disappearance of the pills as a battle won, but she did. The they on the other side of the door had wanted her to take them, and she had run out the clock on their willingness to wait for her to do so. They could have given her any number of things while that line had been in her, but she did not think that they had. They had wanted her to choose the pills. In the absence of her acquiescence, she had been confident that they would try something else (or as confident as a girl locked in a holding cell with no real idea of what was happening was capable of being). She had been allowed plenty of time for confidence to fade while she was left waiting. She spent her time wondering how similar her situation was likely to be to that of the rest of her family.

Her mother would be eligible for a cell in an actual prison for her violation of the population law protocols (if they sent people who had been erased from the system to prison - she was more convinced than ever that that was why there had never been any information about families who were caught having more than four members to find). Her dad would be doubly so - assault against an officer from the population control division was an offense with harsh penalties even without an actual infraction against the laws they were enforcing.

She wondered about Josh and whether wherever he was shared the same monotonous gray walls that filled her vision each time that she opened her eyes. Did the garish poster featuring the "A Family Is Four" slogan provide the only exception to the sameness of color where he was? Did he have to fight to keep his gaze off of it while he wondered what had become of the rest of them? She worried about Josh - he had their father's short fuse. Was it getting him in even more trouble than they already were?

Her thoughts and questions had plenty of time to cycle endlessly back to where they always returned - what had happened (was happening) to Zoe? She had waited and wondered while the cup of pills' place on the floor became home to a succession of what she called meals for lack of anything more appropriate to call them. She had thought it over and decided there was nothing of substance to be gained by refusing them. She had continued to wait. She had continued to wonder.

The next change to occur had been the opening of the door.


	2. Chapter 2

Disclaimer: _Terra Nova_ does not belong to me.

There was no warning before her isolation came to its abrupt end. There was no sound from beyond the door to let her know that someone was coming (she would decide later that this indicated a certain level of soundproofing). She was alone - then she was not. Her eyes just happened to be gazing in the direction of the door (after shifting them away from the garish population control poster one more time) when it opened.

The man who entered through the newly opened door (that closed so swiftly again behind him that not even a glimpse of what was beyond was granted to her) did not bother to acknowledge her presence. He did not even look around the small space to determine where she was. Maddy could not see what the point of that might be. It was not as though she could reasonably be expected to believe that someone just happened to stumble through her locked door looking for a conveniently empty table upon which he could place the contents of his case. If they were trying to make her feel unimportant, they were failing. What purpose could there be to putting on such a show unless there was something they wanted from her?

She waited and watched as the man pulled out a plex with a 3D projector attachment and proceeded to scroll through a series of files so quickly that she only caught a momentary glimpse of names of members of her family. He was, obviously, not actually reviewing the files (there was no possible way that he was reading the words that were dancing through the air in blurred streaks). The brief flashes of names were for her benefit - there was no purpose for the use of the projector aside from making certain that she saw. This continued for several minutes without the man giving any indication that he was, in fact, aware of her presence. She knew that the words were scrolling too quickly for her to digest them, but she found herself trying anyway (trying and failing).

When the man did speak to her (finally), it was all barked words and sharp hand gestures with an occasional slap of his palm against the table in front of him. His eyes only found hers sporadically, but a hardened glare always met her when they did. He painted her parents' "crimes" with a series of words that were probably intended to shame her (but, in truth, just left her wondering if he had memorized an entry from a thesaurus). He made derisive comments about the Shannons' collective genetics (and the importance of stamping out such pretension). He was loud, and he was unpleasant. He also never actually asked her for anything - neither information nor activity. He did not even request that she move from her place on her cot where her head rested against the unforgiving, uncushioned wall to the metal chair across the table from him.

There were pauses, at times, as if he was waiting for her to respond in some fashion (whether to argue or break down she did not know). When she did not, his rhetoric continued onward from where it had paused. Her parents were subversive terrorists; she was a traitorous enabler who was old enough to be held responsible for her failure to report them. He talked a lot, but he essentially stated variations of the same over and over again.

She had immediate suspicions about what this was - her reading of police procedurals (fictional and non) was nearly as extensive as her background in medical reading. Further, she had a father who liked to tell stories (he had, at least, been prone to telling more details than her mother appreciated back when she and Josh had been little enough that both of their parents still thought that they were too young to understand or question the implications of some of those stories). She could have rattled off a variety of methods by which compliance or information could be coaxed from someone by a detective or an interrogator, but she had only one of them at the forefront of her mind as she listened to the statements that were echoing off the walls of her cell.

She was watching the "bad cop" session that would precede the actual conversation involving what they wanted from her. She let the words wash over her without paying too much attention to them while she waited for the shift that would confirm her hypothesis. The door opened soon enough that she wondered if her lack of response was causing them to speed up their introduction of the counterpart. The woman was wearing a spotless white lab coat that looked as if it had been freshly ironed (a stark contrast to the undefined yet undeniable sense of scruffiness that clung to her original visitor).

It set Maddy's nerves on edge to see that they had sent someone in that was so blatantly intended to make her think of her mother. This would be the "good cop." She would be quieter and calmer. She would say comforting things and try to "nice" Maddy into agreeing to give them whatever it was that they wanted while the man would badger her toward the same end.

She smiled to herself (hiding it as best she could from the now two strangers across the room from her - she would get better at masking her facial expressions more quickly than she dreamed) when the opening salvo of the woman was a soft-spoken "I'm sure none of that will be necessary. Maddy is a very bright girl - she'll do the right thing."

She had been too busy thinking about how right she had been to have paid attention to whatever it was that the man had said that the woman had referenced. (It was too bad for them that whatever implied threat and counterpoint had just occurred had been completely wasted on her.)

This was definitely good cop/bad cop. That was fine. They could try out that plan and see how far they got with it. If they asked her (which she was certain that they would not), they had picked the wrong girl. There was nothing remotely disarming about it (not for a girl who knew exactly how scripted all of it must be). She kept quiet. She let them do the talking, and she sifted through the pieces of said and unsaid as best she could.

They would get around to telling her what they were after eventually. Until then, she had nothing to say.


	3. Chapter 3

Disclaimer: _Terra Nova_ does not belong to me.

What they wanted from her (so it would seem) was work - the mathematics, physics, and a sprinkling of other sciences variety of work (the gradually increasing focus on engineering would come later). Maddy decided to oblige them even as she used the grating annoyance of the fact that they never came straight out and asked her for anything (they implied, they mentioned, and they left open-ended suggestions hanging in the air, but they never just told, asked, or even commanded) as a shield against any tendency toward allowing the routine of it all to lull her into anything other than being on constant guard. The belittling insults directed her way might have helped with that if they were not so common as to have become routine themselves. The cossetting tones from her other visitor just made her want to sink further into herself in order to escape from the necessity of listening to them (and there was no further chance of learning anything useful to her situation to be gained from that practice), so she focused on the way it irked her that they always played around the edges of making their point without ever seeming to arrive at it.

Once they provided her with the plex, then they simply left the files needing her attention on it when they left it on her table every (what she called for lack of any information to prove or disprove otherwise) morning. She termed the time when they returned to collect it from her night. They couldn't even come out and ask that it be returned. Agent Rowle just stood there staring at her and rolling his eyes while Dr. Yibbets tutted at him and made comments about Maddy working hard and needing adequate time. She wondered what would happen if she turned her back on them both and refused to surrender it, but she never tried that - it did not mesh with the low key presence that she was trying to maintain.

The plex (if it could still be called that) had been stripped down to remove anything that some might consider extraneous (it hurt Maddy's heart to see the poor thing in its mutilated state). Its ability to connect with anything exterior had been disabled. The calendar and the clock had even been rendered nonfunctional (because, apparently, her ability to monitor elapsed time or know when it was that she was was a danger). That last bit, at least, fit with the theory she had been formulating that the time between her "mornings" and "nights" and vice versa was not consistent. She felt as if her eyes had barely closed before the sound of the door roused her some "mornings" and sat waiting and staring at the walls for what felt like endless hours after having woken on her own on others.

It was another part of the never ending power games that she did not want to understand.

Her "work" featured equations at first - she thought they might be checking her ability to extrapolate and derive at first as they were so seemingly random in their variety. They had her organize lists of data - creating spreadsheets as best she could without any context for the lists of numbers which she was handed. (Later, she would decide that there must be some people using this resource at their disposal as an excuse to shift the responsibility of creating their own reports off of their shoulders.)

Some sets of numbers started to feel familiar (especially when they set her to finding incongruences in page after page). Sometimes, she felt like they handed her completely nonsense sets of numbers just to keep her from noticing that there were patterns (which was a pointless endeavor). She began to sort everything that came in the files on the plex into the categories of fit and not a fit in her head. She didn't know how long the equations testing lasted. She didn't know how long the data sorting lasted. She did notice, however, when they changed the focus of what she was doing to actual problem solving.

She relished the problem solving (even if she had learned to give no outward sign of what she was feeling by that point). There would always be a part of her that wanted to learn and find and fix. Problem solving made her feel as if she could breathe more easily in the confines of the four walls that surrounded her. Maddy knew that was dangerous. She knew that she couldn't afford to get lost in the feeling. She needed to stay grounded and aware of where she was and what she was doing - instead of indulging in the temptation of losing herself in the numbers and findings and fixes to escape her reality.

There was, however, no reason for any of _them_ to know that.

She had kept her head from the very start and completed each task with which she was presented in as slow and methodical of a manner as she thought she could get away with using. They had access to her transcripts, of course, but transcripts only told them where she had ended. They did not tell them anything about how she had gotten there. So, she taught them what she wanted them to believe - that she could do all these tasks and more. She could be their problem solver, but she would be plodding about it. They should expect no sudden strokes of brilliance. They should expect no quick leaps from item to item.

This gave her plenty of time - time to think, time to plan, and time to use if an occasion ever arose where she could use it. Thus, things continued on until the day the door opened and no plex was unceremoniously dropped on her table.

She waited. Dr. Yibbets waited. Agent Rowle stood in the background muttering something that she could not quite discern before walking out of her line of sight. Dr. Yibbets raised an eyebrow and turned so she was half facing the still open door. The door never stayed open. The door always closed immediately after the entrance or exit of each of them. Maddy schooled her features into as uncurious of a mask as she could manage and took steps that were just slightly wobbly toward the unknown of the hallway expecting a hundred different things to occur to block her path before she even got there - nothing did.

That's how she found herself traveling down the hall for the first time - confused, taking it all in as best she could, and ignoring the dueling compulsions to curl up in a ball at how the combination of space and destination was messing with her equilibrium and to bolt as fast as she could as far as she could before they, inevitably, chased her down and returned her to her cell. She just kept walking instead of doing either of those things.

When they stopped in front of one of the other doors, Dr. Yibbets actually began to chatter. There was no other word for it. The woman alternated between clasping her hands together in an attempt to control them and making wide, sweeping gestures displaying how excited and pleased she was about wherever it was that they were. Maddy would not have been surprised if the woman had actually exclaimed "Tada!" when she finally entered a code that was followed by the audible click of a lock disengaging (Maddy counted five keys hit with the last one hit twice). There was no exclamation - just a strangely pleased (with that ever annoying note of sincerity) "Here we are, dear."

Here was a lab.

Maddy understood. They had given her a series of problems to solve, and they now wanted to see if she could actually put some of her answers into practical application.

This was a lab. It appeared to be a functional lab. It had equipment. It had parts. It had tools.

It had tools. Maddy knew tools. Maddy knew all the ways in which tools could be used (she was sure she would think of even more).

Tools meant possibilities.

If circumstances were different, Maddy would have allowed herself to spin around in joy and soak up the possibilities of the room. Circumstances weren't different, so she tilted her head to the side and looked at Dr. Yibbets.

It was their move now, but it would be her move soon.


	4. Chapter 4

Disclaimer: _Terra Nova_ does not belong to me.

She decides to conduct trials because she knows she needs information more than she needs speed. She cannot record anything, of course, but this is hardly the first time that she has faced that particular obstacle (she never found it safe to keep a record of any of her searches involving third children and population regulation infringement either). She needs a baseline of boundaries - both so she knows what it is that she can and cannot get away with doing and so she can tell whether those boundaries loosen or tighten with time and pushing.

She feels that her best path forward is one where every test of the figurative bars in the cell of her life can be passed off as plausible accidents. She decides on each "trial" in advance, gives it a numerical designation, and memorizes any observations she makes in the aftermath with that numerical designation as a sort of an index in the hopes that she will be able to keep all of the information straight in her head.

Trial 1 is simple enough - the lab is a new environment in which they can observe her. Therefore, this is the perfect time for her to start displaying any new habits that she may want to develop. She is busy with her hands in a way that she was not back in her literal cell. She goes back and forth between the plex and piecing actual material items together. This requires her to put the plex pen down when she switches tasks - except she doesn't. Instead of putting it down, she tucks it in her hair behind her ear.

No one comments. No one comments when she "absent mindedly" looks around for it again when she needs it before eventually "finding" it and going on with her task. She continues with variations and expansions of her first trial.

For Trial 4, she tucks the tiny screwdriver she has been using into the place that the plex pen so often resides. Again, there is no comment. She "finds" it again almost twenty minutes later without a word being spoken in relation to her activities.

She doesn't know why. She can theorize, but she does not have the means at her disposal to prove or disprove any of the potential reasons that her trials go the ways that they go. She can only observe and remember and watch for variations. So, that is exactly what she does.

By Trial 7, she makes it all the way through the return trip to her cell without anyone reminding her to put the screwdriver back where it goes. She does not know whether they were not paying enough attention to notice or if they figure that there is not much she can do with one small, not even electronic tool at her disposal. She decides to keep it. She does not "find" it once she is back sitting on her cot (there is no reason to tip them off if they did, in fact, not notice, and she is sure, as she always is, that they are watching what she does while she is in her "room").

She lets the screwdriver fall while she is "sleeping," and it finds a new home wedged between the frame of the cot and the wall. No one comes to remove it while she is in the lab the next day or the next leaving Maddy feeling a strange, reckless compulsion to smuggle every tool she can hold back with her the next time she goes to work. She beats back the impulse and finds herself wondering if this is what it feels like to be Josh - to want to take immediate action about something so badly that things like logic and planning and remembering the bigger picture don't even register.

They start leaving her unsupervised in the lab shortly thereafter, and she no longer sees Agent Rowle or Dr. Yibbets on a "daily" basis.

There is an escort to and from the lab by a rotating (there are three individuals in total) guard that never speaks to her. It sets her on edge (as change in the routine always does now), and she waits six cycles of cell to lab to return to cell before she resumes her trials.

She does not surrender the plex at the end of her days after that, and they only take it to upload and download to and from while she is engaged in some physical construction project in the lab.

She "works" on it as she makes the treks between her two spaces. She gives every indication of being so absorbed in what she is reading or typing that she is paying no attention to the actual process of traveling. This additional level of distraction opens up a new world of possibilities for her trials.

During Trial 23, she simply stops in the middle of the hallway and continues to type. Her escort waits forty two seconds before clearing her throat - Maddy takes the hint that time. The next time she does not choose to let the noise prompt her, and the throat clearing at thirty nine seconds is followed by an additional sixty three seconds of silence before her escort murmurs a "Miss Shannon" and inclines his head in the proper direction they need to continue down the hall.

Maddy mentally files that one under "interesting." It is the only time a verbal acknowledgement of her occurs from one of the escorts. She stops in the hall three cycles later and not even the throat clearing occurs. The escort stands silently for five minutes and fourteen seconds until Maddy decides to "recollect" herself and keep moving. Six cycles after that, there are no more escorts. Dr. Yibbets and Agent Rowle make occasional appearances in the lab to check up on her (or toss cynical comments in her general direction), but her escort in both directions is replaced by the click of the electronic locks on the doors disengaging and a message stating "proceed to lab" or "return to room" lighting up her plex.

This means, of course, that they have restored the plex's ability to wirelessly connect with whatever network they are using in this place. She pushes back the desire to immediately see what sort of functionality and access she can coax from the little device (feeling more sympathy for Josh and some of the trouble he has gotten himself into than she ever has before) and bides her time. It's hard not to try to find her way back to the other side of the connection, but she can wait.

They might be testing her; they might not. She can't afford to be too obvious yet. She just has to keep telling herself that she'll get there eventually. This is just another step along the path.


	5. Chapter 5

Disclaimer: _Terra Nova_ is not mine.

Caterwauling was a word that did not receive enough use. That was Maddy's new, official personal opinion - not that she had anyone to tell. She had run across the term in the course of her reading ages and ages ago - back in the time before population control had uprooted her family's lives when reading for information and pleasure had been a part of her normal day to day existence. She had never found a reason to use the word herself - until now. She thought it was an entirely appropriate description for the sound that the alarm in the building made each time something tripped the mechanism that ushered in the start of the sound anew. The alarms were an ever more frequent (yet still randomly spaced) occurrence, and she paid little attention to the fact that they were loud (or that they were shrill or that the abruptness with which they came tended to cause a startled jump whether you were used to the noise or not).

The equally random intervals involved in the doors having their locks disengaged seemed to push Agent Rowle's proverbial buttons (and never failed to result in a steady increase of muttering and glaring). It was the power being cut off to particular sections of the hallway (or the lab itself) that always caused a momentary pause in Dr. Yibbets' "I'm the nice one" routine, and Maddy thought that the woman might be afraid of the dark.

There was a lot of fairly innocuous chaos running rampant in the building these days. (It was, at least, fairly innocuous from Maddy's perspective. She was sure that the _they_ watching her from somewhere found it to be less so.) As much as Maddy was enjoying her opportunity of rolling her newly usable word around in her head each time the alarms started up again, she could admit that it was what she would be finding the most obnoxious - if she wasn't the cause of all of it in the first place.

Her trials had progressed rather rapidly after she realized that they were leaving her mostly alone. She had new parameters to assess at that point - such as how closely they might be watching. She also decided that if they were doing the stereotypical giving her enough rope with which to hang herself scenario, then she wanted to know that sooner over later. Lingering in the hallway, making wrong turns between point A and point B, and even blatant back tracking of the connection in her plex all occurred in quick succession.

She learned that the single connecting factor in what reactions she received was the work that they were giving her to do. If she was making progress in that, then they let everything but the most blatant of flaunting of their authority go. If she wasn't, then they cracked down on other activities quickly. This told her that they wanted the end result of what she was working toward rather badly (whatever that was). It also told her that either they were a) too concerned with the end result to meddle with her overmuch or b) too sure that they had her exactly where they wanted her to think her other activities had any significance. She also knew that those two options were not necessarily mutually exclusive.

She put most of her focus on things she could do with the plex. She worked layer after layer of depth into what she was doing until there were three distinct subsets to all of her activities. The first was relatively easily traced out, the second significantly less so, and the third buried so far that she hoped they never noticed it beyond the first two. They obviously knew that she was the one messing with their system; she knew that they knew, and they knew that she knew that they knew. It caused a more frequent return of her original "keepers" making their appearances together, but she remained relatively unchallenged otherwise.

Dr. Yibbets took the stance that gifted adolescents often began to act out in order to garner attention or simply because their intellect was not being adequately challenged by their environment. She stressed this point in her "discussions" with Rowle and kept chattering about how Maddy needed to be given more opportunities to use her skills. When speaking directly to Maddy, she would make what Maddy surmised was supposed to be a chiding sort of a tongue clicking sound while asking her if she didn't think she was mature enough to find better outlets. (Maddy never bothered to give her an answer.)

Agent Rowle kept up a steady stream of a doubling down on his usual invective. The jabs themselves were of the same old, same old, but the tone in which they were delivered was becoming increasingly more agitated. (Maddy continued to ignore him - mostly. She may have offered her best "don't I look innocent" smile in his direction on a couple of occasions in return for his glaring.)

This became their new normal, and it actually continued for longer than Maddy had expected it to last.

Then, whoever was doing the system maintenance and repair found the glitch she had created that was setting off the alarms. They repaired it, and the alarm that was happily caterwauling away cut off mid note. The silence lasted for approximately sixty two seconds before the second glitch Maddy had set up to take over after the first (and she was beginning to wonder about what was taking them so long to find it) took effect. Instead of the normal, steady tone of the original alarm, it broke into shorter notes - a crude imitation of the sound of an old fashioned doorbell that Maddy had heard in an old movie that she had watched once. If anyone had been in a position to notice, the pattern that the emergency lights connected to the alarm were flashing spelled out "Maddy says hi" in Morse code. She thought it was a nice touch even if it had taken her a bit to work out the appropriate coding (it wasn't as though she was hurting for time). It only ran for three cycles (the first time), but it prompted a new round of arguing between the two adults that happened to have made an appearance together in her lab that day.

This was not one of their usual back and forth discussions that was designed to be overheard. Maddy had the distinct impression that the good cop/bad cop script had been abandoned by the wayside; she wasn't even sure that either one of them was cognizant that she was in the room. She let the end of the roll of wire she was pulling out drop back to the table and settled back a little in her chair to watch. This was new. For once, she was fairly certain that the discussion in front of her did not have anything to do with her specifically. This was some sort of a personal, philosophical dispute between the two adults that seemed to have been brewing for some time. Several of the things being said were unfamiliar to her, and she filed them away to think on and process later. Dr. Yibbets had just told Rowle that he had no grasp of the intricacies of the larger picture in a snide tone that implied that his intelligence was in question when Maddy found that the man hadn't completely forgotten that she was witnessing their altercation.

"There is absolutely nothing that spoiled brat from a traitor line brings to the table that wouldn't be accomplished eventually via the methods already in place," he jeered at the woman across from him as his finger jabbed in Maddy's direction. "She's not worth the trouble her adolescent temper tantrum games cause." When he turned to look at her, the level of disgust in his expression left all of his previous glares by the wayside in terms of intensity. "You," he bit out, "should have been left to rot in an unfiltered cell just like your father."

"Rowle!" Dr. Yibbets nearly screeched, but he merely leaned against the wall with his arms crossed while she moved closer and started hissing whispers that Maddy could not make out from across the room. At that point, she didn't even care what the words might be.

She sucked in a breath as slowly as she could manage in an attempt to keep the tears that wanted to burst out of her from making an appearance. She was not going to cry in front of them. She would not let that happen. She was not going to give him that satisfaction - not if there was any way that she could keep from it. He already knew that he had scored a hit; she was not going to add a breakdown to the tally. She kept a firm, steady rhythm to her breathing and fought her way beyond the desire to sob or gasp or scream. She turned her head deliberately back to the table and picked up the wire strippers so that she could continue on with the task that their bickering originally interrupted. She blinked rapidly to clear her eyes and wished that she could clear her head as easily because she knew that Agent Rowle was right whether he was telling the truth or not. She didn't know what was happening to her dad - to any of her family. He could very well be dying slowly in a cell somewhere. She was just a kid playing games with their computer system while her family suffered, and she wasn't doing (couldn't do) anything about it.


	6. Chapter 6

Disclaimer: _Terra Nova_ does not belong to me.

The words on the screen did not change when she blinked. They did not morph into something less threatening. They did not make her heart beat any less rapidly. They did not stifle the choking, sobbing sound that was trying to make its way out of her throat. She told herself again that she did not know what the words meant. It might not be what she was thinking. It might not be that bad. It might . . . might . . . might - she could not deal with might right now. She needed answers -sure ones. She held her breath and double clicked not really believing that it would get her anywhere, but she had to have some place from which to start.

Everything Maddy had ever taught herself about looking for information failed her in this instance. The simple truth is that no matter how hard you look, you cannot find information that does not exist. Her family had been erased from the system - completely. Zoe, of course, had never been listed in any database to begin with, but she and Josh no longer had birth records. Their school files had been scrubbed. Her parents' employment records were likewise missing - which only made sense as all of their pre-employment records were no longer in existence either (birth, school, etc.). They had even gone back and removed a copy of an article Elisabeth had written when she was still a virology researcher during her student years.

The Shannon family did not merely no longer exist. As far as the electronic record keeping upon which their world ran was concerned, none of them had ever existed.

There were only so many things that Maddy could try for finding information in the face of that. She kept trying - desperately looking for anything that she could think of that might give her some sort of a lead. None of it worked. Nothing she was trying worked even as she continued to go through the motions of covering the footprints of all of her attempts at searches within the second layer of her security measures.

She was beating her head against an electronic brick wall, and the brick wall was winning the battle. Rowle's words did not help her level of desperation to find something. She let the research she was conducting under her third layer of security fall by the wayside while she redoubled her efforts to gain some news of her family.

She had noticed that there was a numerical tag that often appeared in the files that they loaded onto her plex. She had determined that it was an identifier that they used in their record keeping for her, and the course of her searches had led her to a file that was labeled with simply that number with the designation "Active File" following it. She had never been able to get the actual file open (because, apparently, active files on people required additional levels of security that she had yet to crack).

It was, finally, in a series of near randomly tried searches in the aftermath of Rowle hurling his last blow at her (she was not thinking particularly clear headedly and just wanted to try as many things as she could as quickly as she could in an attempt to feel as though she was doing something), that she found them.

There they were - five files with the same four digit start sitting there still every bit as out of her reach as the information had ever been since she did not know how to actually open them. Four of them (including the one she knew was hers) stated "Active File" in clear letters that broke her heart because the third file in the list did not have those words. It said "File Closed." She did not know what that meant, but she suspected the worst. Rowle's words cycled through her head in an endless loop of "left to rot" that she could not seem to break away from no matter how many times she tried to tell herself that the word closed did not have to carry that meaning.

That was when she double clicked - fully expecting to be met with the same prompts to fulfill further security requirements that had always met her attempts at gaining access to her file. Her expectations were wrong.

Apparently, closed files were closed and, therefore, undeserving of further, special protections. It opened when she clicked on it with no further prompting on her part, and she felt her eyes close more than actively decided to close them while she gave herself a moment to try and mentally prepare for what the words that were going to greet her might be.

The first thing that registered was that it was not her father's file. It was Zoe's. It did not contain her name, but the initial heading of Case Number (the four digit code all of their files shared) was followed by Detainee: Toddler (female). It had to be Zoe. The next line left her in a whirlwind of confused emotions that she was not certain she was capable of sorting her way through - Status: Adopted (File Closed).

Zoe was not locked in a cell somewhere. She was not alone. She was not forgotten. She was not actively being punished for decisions in which she had had no part. She was out there somewhere as part of a family, but it was a family that was not hers.

Zoe hadn't been unwanted; she hadn't been abandoned. She had been a well-loved daughter and baby sister. She was so little. Would she even remember the family that had put their own safety and futures on the line to have and keep her? Would she forget that she was ever someone else other than the child of the people with whom she had been placed? Would she find herself humming songs that she would never remember from whence they came (a product of Josh's created on the spot lullabies strummed on his guitar)? Would she find stories familiar and not know why (from endless hours of Maddy entertaining her with fairy tales and descriptions of animals none of them were likely to ever see)? Would she ever know anything about the parents that had put her life ahead of their own?

Maddy could not answer any of those questions.

She told herself it was okay that she was angry and relieved all at the same time. She had imagined so many things that were so much worse than adoption - so, so much worse. It was okay to be happy that Zoe was safe. It was okay to be happy that Population Control had not locked her up somewhere or even gotten rid of the living, breathing reminder that everyone did not abide by their rules.

She was still angry. She told herself that that was okay as well - as long as she found a way to use it. She knew that the other three files were active. Her family was alive. That meant that they were physically somewhere, and if they were physically somewhere, then that meant that there had to be a way to find them. She just had to figure out what it was.


	7. Chapter 7

Disclaimer: _Terra Nova_ does not belong to me.

It was the sense that she was surrounded by too much light that woke her - if it could really be called waking. She was quite groggy. She was not entirely certain that she was really awake. She thought that she might be drifting in that halfway point in which neither waking nor sleeping was an accurate description of the state. Her eyes were not cooperating with her attempts to get them to open. They felt heavy - as if raising the lids was simply more effort than her body was capable of making. There was a dull ache that seemed to be evenly distributed around her head that was persistent in pulling her attention away from the eyes that she could not make cooperate. Her mouth was dry with a strange taste that she could only define as disgusting and her throat was so scratchy that the instinctive swallowing of saliva that occurred as she became aware of it only made the discomfort worse.

Then, there was the continued presence of the teasing light just beyond her closed lids that refused to release its hold and allow her to sink back into the unawareness of sleep. Understanding that such a lapse in sensation was not going to be available to her, she struggled toward the other option. This much was clear to her even in the midst of her haze and confusion - something had most definitely changed drastically.

She should have known that something was coming. There had been a series of changes in her day to day routines that were clear indications that things around her were shifting in preparation for something. She could only guess that whatever that something was was big.

The alternate "distraction" assignments that had been peppered throughout her workload had dwindled down to nothing. The tasks which they gave her to complete consisted in their entirety of reworking applied equations, creating reversals of the results of those equations, and designing and rewiring circuit boards while making a series of repairs in varying degrees to the same. She still did not know exactly what this work that they wanted from her was ultimately for, but she knew that they essentially wanted something to be reverse engineered in order to make it do the opposite of what had originally been intended.

The files in the servers offered her no assistance in further decoding the matter. There were only project code names listed and no master list of what they referenced anywhere to be found. She had stopped trying to find anything along those lines and refocused the use of her time toward other goals.

The side assignments were not the only thing that had dwindled. Agent Rowle's presence had undergone a similar decline. His visits became less and less (and he was only there with what seemed to be Dr. Yibbets' oversight in the long term aftermath of his outburst in her direction). There was a palatable tension between the two of them that seemed to come only from his side. Dr. Yibbets did not seem tense - she seemed smug (even if she never commented on it in front of Maddy). Whatever philosophical battle it was in which the two of them had been engaged, it was clear that Agent Rowle was not on the winning side. Then, he stopped coming altogether.

Dr. Yibbets started appearing more frequently. She was clearly pleased with whatever it was that was happening in the background and higher official levels of the place. Maddy might have credited the lack of Agent Rowle with the woman's good mood, but she really did not think that that was actually it. She was so excited about something that Maddy was not certain that the absence of her previous counterpart was even really registering. The woman was suddenly more talkative than ever (and she had always been chatty in a detached, vague sort of a way) while she was actually communicating less of substance than she ever had previously.

Maddy had spent more of her "free time" than ever on the carefully layered third tier of her security precautions as she made and discarded and remade escape plans based on the building schematics and security protocols that she found in those searches. She had ideas, she had contingencies, and she even had a few well-thought out options that she estimated at above the 85 percent chance of success mark. She kept them front and center in her head and adjusted them as she thought of more possibilities in case the opportunity ever presented itself. In case, she reminded herself, there was ever somewhere for her to actually go if she did escape.

The last clear memory that she had was of knowing that something had just gone wrong. She had finished what passed for her "evening" meal after returning from the lab to her cell when her head had begun to spin, and she had sensed that she was moments away from blacking out. They had drugged her food. She had gotten too complacent. They had struck at her just when she was beginning to think that that was an avenue of attack that they were not going to pursue. Then, everything had been black.

Things were not black now.

There was light pushing at the other side of her closed eyes. She was less groggy even though her other symptoms persisted. She focused on the weight of her eyelids and worked at it until she finally got one of them to open just a smidgeon. She slammed it shut far more quickly than she was aware that she could move at that point.

She did not know if it was merely the condition in which she currently found herself, but she didn't think she had ever been exposed to quite so much light at once in her life. She waited for a moment and tried to open her eyes again. She got both open that time but for hardly any longer than the first. Her third attempt was more successful but ended when she learned that she was not remotely ready to move from prone to sitting.

When her eyes were truly open, she found that she was not merely in need of physical adjustment. She was desperately in need of mental adjustment as well. She blinked slowly and tried to process what was in front of her.

This changed absolutely everything. All of her previous plans and plotting were going to require revision at the least and a complete and utter overhaul most likely. She was fairly certain that she was about to be starting from scratch because she was fairly positive that what she was seeing was a sign that she most definitely wasn't in Kansas anymore. She laughed out loud despite the hurt in her throat in what was nothing more or less than a moment of being overwhelmed over which she had no control. Something had picked her up while she was sleeping and deposited her in a completely new and alien environment.

The brightness that had pushed her awake and injured her eyes was natural light that was seeping in around the frame of the door.


	8. Chapter 8

Disclaimer: _Terra Nova_ is not mine.

There was a glass of water on a small table beside the bed where she had woken. She was reluctant to eat or drink anything that they had provided for her after her last experience, but the condition of her mouth and throat was not giving her much in the way of options. She did not know how long she had been out of commission, but it had been long enough for her to become decidedly dehydrated. The water was warm - indicating to her that it had been sitting there for some time. She sipped at it anyway and was pleased when it did nothing to make her feel worse. She was sorry when the glass was empty, but she figured some water was better than none.

She was not left with much time for reflection. The door slammed open to reveal a frowning Dr. Yibbets who let a softly muttered "finally" escape before giving her the first direct order that she had ever uttered.

"Come quickly," the woman demanded gesturing toward the open door that was allowing even more light to flood in to the space. Maddy was startled enough to follow the direction, and the other woman snagged her by the crook of the arm as she got closer and began leading her away.

Dr. Yibbets' bustling presence did little to quell her confusion - especially since the woman was openly displaying the fact that she was displeased with her for some reason that Maddy could not discern. (If anyone ought to be perturbed in the aftermath of the spiking of her supper, then Maddy felt confident that it ought to be her.) She barely registered that they were inside of a small house before they were exiting to the outdoors.

The light was everywhere.

She was certain that the aftermath of whatever substance they had used to render her unconscious had contributed to the sensitivity of her eyes, but she knew (as she followed the impatient tugging at her arm that Dr. Yibbets was using to guide her) she had truly never been exposed to light this bright before. The light was not the only thing that was strange - the air felt odd. Part of that might be because she had never wandered around outside without a filter between her airway and the elements before, but something in the back of her brain processed the way the air felt against her skin and labeled it humidity. This, she realized, is what it felt like to be in air that was not strictly controlled, treated, and recycled (as she had been for the last however long she had spent locked away).

Everything in her head was a whirling blur of sensations. The light, the air, and the strange plants that appeared as they traveled down an open path with the occasional person visible (all without protective breathing apparatus) were all trying to tell her something that she was not quite ready to grasp. She had barely even dreamed of ever seeing the inside of a dome that was only half as impressive as this. Even the pain when she stubbed her toe against a stray rock (she had never had shoes inside the facility from whence they had come and that had not changed in her new circumstances), could not break into the awe of trying to take it all in even as she was hurried along.

Their destination was another building that turned out to be occupied by several persons already.

It would have been less disturbing if there had been yelling. The scene that was playing out as she and Dr. Yibbets walked through the door was being conducted with low, calm tones that made the threat of violence hanging in the air that much more difficult to process. Maddy did not know what the point of disagreement between the two men standing in the center of the room was, but the expression on the face of the one doing the asking set off more alarm bells in her head than she realized she had had. She could not see the man who was in the midst of refusing something's face given the angle of their approach, but she catalogued the other man's expression as amused expectation - almost like a child pleased to be presented with a challenge.

He looked like a man who was well aware that he had the upper hand and was about to thoroughly enjoy showing the other man just how little control he actually had over the ultimate decision.

She found herself wanting to call out a warning when that amused, smug gaze fixed on another man - this one trembling while being pinned in place by one uniformed guard at each arm.

"So . . . you are telling me that you won't fix it and he can't fix it," he stated matter of factly with a small gesture in the direction of the refusing man first and the held man second. The other man just waited. There was a dramatic sounding sigh before he once again leveled his gaze at the man being held. "I suppose that makes you expendable. Put his head through the window."

Maddy was certain that the order would have been followed if Dr. Yibbets hadn't opted to speak up at that moment. As it was, the guard that had moved had already twisted the captured man and smacked his forehead against the pane hard enough for it to splinter. He froze when Dr. Yibbets spoke and held the prisoner (who had a variety of scratches and one cut that was dripping blood into his eye) in a ready position to hit the glass again while he looked at the order giver for further directions.

"Is that really necessary" had been Dr. Yibbets' comment (sounding more irritated than alarmed).

He held a hand up in a wait position for the guard. "I hate being interrupted," he told Maddy's escort, "almost as much as I hate having to wait for things."

Dr. Yibbets made a protesting sound that Maddy was sure was supposed to be a precursor to words, but she was cut off before they came.

"No more excuses," he barked at her. "Take the trouble to figure out the correct dosage next time," his eyes raked over Maddy in her position halfway behind the woman before he continued. "Or bother to feed the girl from time to time," he commented. "They haven't done a very good job of taking care of you, have they?"

Maddy was surprised to find that he was addressing her.

"We'll take care of that shortly," he added before turning to survey the other men in the room. "It seems our discussion has been rendered irrelevant, gentlemen. Try not to look so dour - you're going to frighten my new assistant." His eyes shifted back to meet Maddy's own.

"We've been exchanging information for quite some time now," he informed her. "Not that you were aware of the relationship. Still, it's a pleasure to finally have you here in person - it cuts down on the time lag tremendously. We have a lot to do, Maddy Shannon. Welcome to Terra Nova."

* * *

AN: There will not be another update until after July 4th.


	9. Chapter 9

Disclaimer: _Terra Nova_ does not belong to me.

Everything around her is surreal now.

Even thinking those words is surreal - as if being disappeared and erased from electronic records before being held in a facility where she was expected to provide solutions for her captors' problems had been the makings of an average Tuesday.

This place is constantly assaulting her senses with just how far down the proverbial rabbit hole she has tumbled. The sunlight is bright enough to hurt her eyes. Plants grow without requiring intervention (in fact, they actively expand and threaten to take over everything in their path unless they are consistently curtailed). She does not have to check over and wear equipment to protect her lungs just to walk outside. Large omnivores that her brain reminds her ought to be lost to history routinely stretch their necks over the fence that surrounds the settlement in order to graze on leaves from inside the boundaries. It is all a lot to process.

Sometimes, she wonders if she ever really woke up - if whatever they had given her in that last meal had reduced her to some sort of comatose state where her imagination is painting scenes to keep her occupied until they wake her the next time they find themselves in need of her services. She wonders a lot of things, but that particular path of maybes never lingers for long despite its insistence on periodic reappearances - she knows that it cannot really be true. She knows that her mind would have included a reunion with her family if this was all some sort of intricate, seemingly endless dream.

She discovers fairly quickly that even her reflection leaves her floating out in the waters of the surreal instead of bringing her the comfort of the familiar. The girl that she used to see in the mirror would have told her that coming to this place had been a treasured hope - a wish granted of a second chance and a safe place for a little sister who had been hidden even before she drew her first breath. What she sees when she actually looks in the mirror (the first time that she decides to use the new hairbrush she has been gifted in a more thorough manner) may be the most surreal part of it all.

Somehow, it seems wrong that she still looks like her. She is not certain what it was that she was expecting, but this in between where she is not what she remembers from before but has not turned into someone so different that she cannot recognize herself is not it. She can see the faintest sparkle of hope still lingering in the back of this girl's eyes (when it feels as if it would have been more practical for that to have all been drained away by now). She can see dreams of second chances (ones to be worked and striven for and a willingness to fight for them) even though there is no family around her to benefit. She can see a clinging to that wish of a safe place pushing against the knowledge that there is nothing truly safe about it at all. She used to find dichotomies fascinating. Now, they are just another reason to let herself drift out into the all too easy to lose oneself in overwhelmingness of it all, and she cannot have that. She cannot get lost. She cannot drift. She cannot be overwhelmed. She has to keep herself together and focused and observant. She has to be ready - she just does not know for what.

The girl whose reflection she sees physically looks none of those latter things and all too disturbingly like the former.

Her eyes have circles under them that are so deep that she is reminded of the black eye Josh got when he was eight (she made it one of her missions in life to ensure that he remained oblivious to anything that happened to her with the other children at school from that point forward). Her complexion has a pallor to it that makes her look decidedly unwell. She finds herself glancing between her reflection and her wrist bones wondering how it is that she never noticed that she must weigh significantly less than she did when population control first took her into custody despite the passage of time and the fact that she should be in the midst of adolescent growth spurts. She looks strangely older and careworn and younger and shrunken at the same time.

It is no wonder that Lucas is always making such snide remarks to Dr. Yibbets about her "care." The chronic state of unbalance in which he puts her is every bit as surreal as the rest of it. He cannot be trusted. She knows that. She also knows that he is the best potential source of information that she has at the moment. She feels the shudder run through her and refocuses on the task at hand - getting the brush she is holding through the tangles that seem to be tightening even further in her hair. Dr. Yibbets will be appearing at any moment to escort her across the settlement to the lab for another round of work. She can handle work.

Working is something that Maddy is used to doing. She can organize information. She can sort through data. She can work equations. She can extrapolate theories on reversing processes. She can rewire the broken circuits that they place before her without needing to give it much thought. She has a better idea of what they have been having her do all along now, but that, strangely, is not what is bothering her about the pile of expectations to be met that are being presented to her on a daily basis. She has gotten used to being watched but not like this.

This hovering, intensely quiet watching with no pretense that that is exactly what he is doing is not what she has learned to handle, but she is going to have to find a way to manage. This is her life now, and she will find her way through it just like she did before - until they flip it all upside down on her again.


	10. Chapter 10

Disclaimer: _Terra Nova_ does not belong to me.

Dr. Yibbets was increasingly engrossed in some project of her own that had her making trips out of the settlement and returning with measurements and numbers that she was all too willing to foist off on to Maddy to organize whenever she thought that Lucas was not paying attention.

Maddy could have told her that it was wasted effort on her part - there were not actual times when Lucas was not paying attention. He knew everything that happened in that lab (especially when it concerned her), and he seemed smugly amused that the older woman thought she was slipping things through without his notice. He had even winked at her once when Dr. Yibbets's back was turned. It was just another one of the ways that he was always keeping her off balance. She did not like it - the implication that the two of them were on terms where it was alright for them to have private exchanges at the expense of those around them. They were not on equal footing. Maddy was just as much a prisoner here as she had ever been. The accommodations might have been an upgrade, the view might have been better, and there might have been a cursory gain in that she was not spending her time behind locked doors, but she still was not here by choice. She was still expected to work on what they placed in front of her regardless of whether or not it was what she wanted to be doing. Her family was still somewhere where she was not, and all of the civility and what Maddy was sometimes almost certain was sincere interest in her well-being on the part of the man that was hovering over her shoulder more often than not while she tried to get through the work was not going to change that.

Lucas Taylor made her skin crawl in a way that she struggled to define. It was not that she felt as if she was personally unsafe in his presence - rather, she thought the fact that she had a solid conviction that she was likely the safest person in the room whenever he was present was what was making her so nervous. It was the why of that, she thought, that might be giving her what a story remembered from long ago had termed the heebie jeebies. She was under some sort of protection in Lucas's presence because he seemed to view her as some sort of a combination of new toy, useful tool, and potential pet all wrapped into one package.

He hovered and muttered additional calculations over her shoulder while she worked through data sorting and equations. He barked questions and paced while she reworked damaged circuitry. He made snide comments and hissed threats at the other people who had the misfortune to find themselves in the lab. Then, in such a smooth transition that you could never tell when it was coming, he would politely inquire if she needed anything else in the way of personal supplies or even decorations for her room. He would fuss at her about her eating habits and show up with samples of new foods for her to try. He was insistent about medical checkups, told off and banished one of the members of his ever present security detail for sneezing in her general direction, and produced a cardigan sweater within minutes of the first time he noticed her rubbing at her arms while she was working.

He talked to her like he expected her to follow along with what he was saying no matter how technical the conversation got (which she could, for the most part, but it was still odd after the talking at and around her that she had dealt with during the course of her confinement). He seemed pleased when she could add to what he was saying, patiently and tolerantly explained on the couple of occasions that she could not, and took to patting her on the top of the head when she answered a question he presented for her input.

She would rather he not touch her. She would really rather that no one touch her. She was not used to being touched these days, and the semi affectionate motions that he made just underscored the mockery of family and friendship in the absence thereof that she was living. Of course, no one actually asked her what she really wanted. Lucas might be concerned with her general well- being. He might even have enough of a vested interest in her usefulness to be willing to care about making her moderately comfortable. That did not make them whatever it was that he seemed to want her to think that they were.

She was fairly sure that discomfort in his presence was a more normal than not state of being for more than just her. She did not see many people up close (and actually interacted with even less), but those that she saw in Lucas's presence never seemed to be anything other than anxious. The security detail always looked professional and detached, but she caught the side eye glances that they sent the man's way and the shared looks that they thought were going unnoticed behind his back. She saw the way that the only other person who spent any significant amount of time in the lab (she had heard Lucas call him Malcolm, but they had never been introduced) watched him in a similar manner as she thought one might keep an eye on a ticking time bomb. Although, nervous might just be that particular scientist's natural state of being.

She was wary of Malcolm being anywhere near her at first; she was wary of everyone at first (and, frankly, she was wary of everyone even after they were more familiar figures to her). He looked at her oddly sometimes, but it did not give her the same feeling of tension as when Lucas took time out of his schedule to stand around and study her. Malcolm looked at her in unguarded moments as if he was trying to find something that he had lost. She did not much like it, but it did not make her feel anything other than defensive. Malcolm had been filed in her head as not a threat and not a potential asset (he might know more than she did about the situation in and set up of the settlement, but he was every bit as much out of the pertinent information loop as she was).

There was a girl that Maddy thought was likely a few years older than she was that made short appearances from time to time. Lucas had gone to the trouble of introducing her. She was Skye, and she looked a mixture of determined and bordering on the edge of a nervous breakdown each time that a member of the security detail escorted her to meet Lucas for dinner or to go for a walk or whatever it was for which he had requested her presence that time. Lucas genuinely liked her, but it did not seem to make her any less anxious about having to spend time with him.

Dr. Yibbets, well, Dr. Yibbets avoided being in the same place at the same time as him as much as possible. She was succeeding more and more in that endeavor with every day that went by, but Maddy was suffering from no delusion that that was for any reason other than the fact that Lucas was letting her.

There were other people making decisions (and she was certain unseen ones calling shots on the bigger picture still), but Lucas Taylor was a center point in everything that was happening. Maddy just had to figure out whether that would help or hinder her whenever she finally figured out what it was she needed to do next.


	11. Chapter 11

Disclaimer: _Terra Nova_ is not mine.

"That's who we are, Maddy - children who had to grow up in the shadow of our father's failures. It isn't fair or right, but that was the lot we both were cast. We have to live with the punishment that someone else incurred. It doesn't matter what we do or where we go - that specter will hang over our heads every day of our lives. There's nothing we can do to change that. We just have to keep living with it. You understand, don't you? You know what it's like even if you don't want to admit it."

She was getting used to his tendency to monologue. It was a part of the background noise of her days, and she had learned to keep her attention half tuned in case something was said that required a response on her part. (That was usually not the case. He seemed mostly content that she had to be present to hear whatever it was he was saying on any given day.) She listened while she worked on whatever project she currently had in front of her - giving whatever it was and whatever thinking she was dedicating that section of the day to the majority of her attention. The topics of his talks shifted (sometimes multiple times in the same conversation), but the theme that she should understand him was underlying in them all. She had listened to the fundamental unfairness of the Terra Nova system, how the Terra Nova system had never really been intended to be a permanent system anyway, how much better off everyone would be if they used Terra Nova as a resource instead of an escape, and lots and lots of ramblings about fathers in general and attempts at comparisons between his and hers in specific.

She might not dedicate a lot of her attention to what he said at any given time, but that did not mean that she did not roll the words around in her head and consider their implications in quiet hours (hours when he wasn't standing over her shoulder or hovering in her vicinity and adding to her constant state of edginess). She did not have an opinion on Terra Nova any longer. It had been a fairy tale of a dream once, but she no longer had time for fairy tales of that nature. Maybe it was better to find ways to use the resources in the most responsible and efficient way possible. Those hadn't been considerations back in the days that it had been a one way only trip. That was different now. Maddy was different now.

The most important aspect of the fact that the portal now went in both directions to her was that she could still get back to her family. That was what mattered. That was what she considered important. That was what she had to find a plan for using.

"Me?" He was saying. "Well, I found something deeply satisfying to occupy my time - revenge. I didn't take the petty, personally directed kind either. I made it an art. I've bided my time and bled and suffered for the cause and here it is at last - a destruction of a philosophy. It is a final failure delivered by my hand and so all-encompassing that an intelligent man would understand that he was beaten and concede the point gracefully. Alas, we've never pretended that I inherited my brains from my father."

"Now you," his voice shifted to a strange mix of chiding and amused, "wouldn't like that, would you? Revenge just isn't your cup of tea . . . yet . . . maybe never. You still think things should be fixed. You still think that you can fix things. Some things are beyond fixing, Maddy." He sounded almost sad for a moment as if he was regretting that these were things that he felt he needed to say to her. It did not last long before his voice changed again to something hard and pointed with the intention of wounding.

"There are things that can't be fixed. There are things that can't be changed. Life isn't fair, and it most certainly isn't rainbows and sunshine and happy endings all around. You'll have to get over that sooner or later. Don't frown at me, little girl," his voice shifted again to a tone that was almost teasing (or would have been if it didn't still sound vaguely dangerous). "If you are determined to be a fixer, then I'm all for it. You are just going to have to learn what can still be fixed. This is a gift for you, Maddy," he said making an encompassing gesture with both hands that indicated the whole of the lab. "There is a treasure trove of items at your disposal here for you to explore and manipulate and find utterly brilliant uses for. Think of all the things back in the real world that you might be able to improve. Think of all the people that you can help have a happier ending than they otherwise would have. You'd like that, wouldn't you? To make a difference? To make the world a better place? You can do that here. I can make that happen for you. There might even be some sunshine and rainbows after all."

A sound from the far corner of the lab as two objects not intended to meet clanged against each other interrupted his speech. He snickered under his breath and spoke to the woman that was mopping that section of the floor. She was around quite often, but Maddy had never seen anyone actually acknowledge her presence before.

"Uh-Lee-Cee-Uh," Lucas drawled slowly. "Did the eavesdropping get in the way of your concentration?"

Maddy had the distinct impression that she was seeing the human version of a long ago read story about someone poking a sleeping dragon, but the woman didn't reply. She simply ducked her head down and continued to work.

"So stubborn," he sighed before turning back in Maddy's direction. "People always let you down. You need to learn to stop thinking that it will ever be different. Isn't that right, Alicia?" He tossed over his shoulder. "She could tell you all about that, but she won't. She's too disgustingly loyal for that and just look where that's gotten her." He shook his head. "All of the women in my life are always disgustingly, trustingly loyal to the same man. And he isn't worth it. Really, he isn't. He's never there for them when they really need him to be. Except for you, of course, Maddy dear. I don't have to share you, now do I?"

He brushed a hand over her head smoothing down her hair in something of a possessive gesture that she wasn't sure was directed more at herself or at Alicia. He left the building without further comment.

The woman paused a moment in her cleaning as if waiting for Maddy to say something, but Maddy did not. She turned her head and went back to her work - everything she had experienced was screaming at her that it was far too much like being set up. She did not know whether this was a test or a game or anything of the sort, and she was not going to walk blindly into whatever it was.

She needed to add all of whatever that had been to her observations and asset/liability assessments.


	12. Chapter 12

Disclaimer: _Terra Nova_ is not mine.

Maddy watches.

She keeps an eye on the woman that figures in the background of her days scrubbing floors and clearing up the often intentionally spilled items left in the wake of Lucas's guards. (She is also, Maddy discovers once when Dr. Yibbets sends her to fetch something she had forgotten to bring with her in the morning, the person who straightens up their house each morning after they leave.) She hears Malcolm call her Washington once which fits with Maddy's observations of the woman's posture and movements that make her think military (there is a similarity between her and the guard details she sees that speaks of training). She finds that Lucas's reference to her as Alicia has stuck in her head and become the label that she uses for her when she is thinking - maybe because it puts some mental distance between her and the guards (always referred to by their last names) because she is sensitive to lumping the other woman together with those who are obviously captors of one sort or another.

Everything she notices about Alicia screams that allowing her to participate in the mopping of floors is a calculated risk on the part of those who are managing this facility (which she knows means that Lucas is somehow involved). It seems to be an exercise designed to mock the woman. Lucas, in particular, seems to enjoy the fact that she is employed in what could be termed menial tasks (Maddy hates that phrase as it implies that such things are not necessary - as if any lab could operate in an environment that was improperly taken care of). Alicia, however, moves with a sort of grace and efficiency of movement through each of the tasks that leaves Maddy thinking of it as a dance - a potentially deadly one but a dance none the less.

Her theories are only further confirmed when she sees the woman break the mop in half and use the jagged edge to kill three pterosaurs that found a way into the lab while she and Malcolm were working on a method to lead them away from the colony. She does not really understand why Alicia stays. Maddy always knew that she would have to have a place to run to when she was still confined to that building on the other side of the portal. She does not think that Alicia should suffer from the same concern. She is fairly certain that the woman could slip outside the gates and lose herself in the wide world that exists beyond the boundaries. She is equally certain that Lucas knows that as well. Sometimes, she thinks he is trying to goad her into it with phrases and comments that imply a shared history between the two that her lack of adequate background information leaves only half understood.

She decides that Alicia straddles the categories of asset and potential danger for Maddy's purposes of reference. Nothing she sees shifts that impression in the days that follow.

Dr. Yibbets is soon gone more than she is present. No one implies that there is any reason for Maddy to have further supervision in her more extended absences (at least not in her presence). Thus, she is alone in the house when she wakes to cramping in her abdomen and a situation to handle. She is not prepared for this - hasn't had a reason to be. This particular method of marking the passage of time has not been available to her the entire time she has been in custody. She rolls herself out of bed and starts looking for anything to use in place of what she knows she does not have because there is no possible way that she is requesting Lucas's help with this.

She does not make requests for Lucas's help, and this will not be the item where she begins to do so. She does not ask for things because she knows that requests granted come with strings attached to them. Lucas seems to be operating under the peculiar delusion that she owes him something for the "opportunities" which he has "gifted" her and spends quite a bit of time attempting to encourage her to think likewise. She owes the people who brought her here exactly nothing (and no amount of words tossed in her direction are going to convince or brainwash her into believing otherwise).

None of that determination, however, fixes her current predicament. There is a part of her mind (unreasonable as she may understand that it is) that blames Lucas and his insistence on improved nutrition and upping her caloric intake for the situation. She knows this is normal. She knows this is how she is supposed to function, but, here in this moment, all she can think is how utterly inconvenient it is to deal with the whole process. She is late to "work" by the time she has finished ransacking all of the cabinets in the house (as if the contents might have miraculously changed from what she has already discovered and catalogued). She decides that she does not care that she is off her schedule. No one has ever bothered to tell her an "official" time for her to be at the lab anyway. Dr. Yibbets has strongly encouraged her to move a little faster on a couple of occasions, but she has mostly merely followed the routine of wake, ready, go, stay until darkness falls, return, sleep, and repeat.

While she could do with a slightly less achy break in the monotony, she is out of humor with the world in general enough at the moment to take a level of satisfaction (petty as it may be) in making everyone who has ever expected anything of her without asking wait.

She figures out how closely timed the arrival of their "housekeeper" is to her usual departure exactly ten minutes later. This gives her pause. She does not ask for things any more - knew not to ask most people for things even back in her before before, but she legitimately needs someone to at least offer some direction. She supposes she could start tearing the linens (and has a moment's pause as she considers that that might actually be something that they do here), but she shakes that thought off just as quickly as it comes.

Asking Alicia isn't like asking one of the others. Alicia is here doing things because other people insist just like she is. And while she has no delusions that help of any kind will not still have strings attached, she is confident that strings from Alicia will be of a different sort than strings from Lucas.

She has never been good at starting conversations (and her time in captivity has not granted her improved social skills). She does not have a plan when she opens her mouth and narrowly avoids letting the cringe she feels show when the word that comes out of her mouth is "Hey."

She keeps going before she has any more time to regret what she is saying and how she is saying it. "So, I find myself in need of . . . girl things."


	13. Chapter 13

Disclaimer: _Terra Nova_ does not belong to me.

Maddy listens.

This, it seems, is the currency in which Alicia intends to collect her payment for assistance granted. Maddy obliges her accordingly. She knew that opening a dialogue (especially one featuring a request) with the woman would ultimately be opening more than a dialogue, but this particular expectation causes her very little in the way of effort. Maddy has been listening while people talk at her for quite some time. She has gotten very good at paying just enough attention to what is going on around her to make any necessary acknowledgements when called upon while still focusing on what she is doing rather than what anyone in particular might be saying to her. It is listening (and filing away for future organization and reference) and being ready to respond without truly giving the speaker her attention. It's practically her default state of being at this point.

In the beginning, she does the same with the woman who assisted her during her minor crisis. Alicia is not forthcoming about what it is that she wants from her, but Maddy is (sadly) used to that. Everyone likes to hint and suggest and maneuver around instead of through, and Maddy's only moderate break from that is when Lucas is giving a monologue (and even then, he really wants her to think that she's drawing the conclusions of her own volition instead of being pushed toward them by his particular brand of skewing the facts). She doesn't like that her interactions with others all boil down to the same pretense, but she has accepted it as her current (and maybe forever) normal.

She is neither naive nor delusional enough to believe that Alicia simply wants to tell her stories because she finds it an enjoyable way to pass the time, but telling the stories is the only move the woman has made. There are far worse ways in which payment could have been extracted from her. Maddy knows that from experience (and an active imagination). Alicia doesn't make demands. Alicia doesn't insist. She just tells.

Maddy knows it is because she is building up to something. She recognizes that it may not be something very dramatic - that this may be more along the lines of taking a chance. Alicia is trying to give herself additional options (not so very different from when Maddy organizes the people with whom she interacts into asset/not an asset/outright danger categories). Alicia is creating a situation so that she may have told enough of the right sorts of things that when the time comes (and some as yet to be determined future event takes place), Maddy will choose a side - Alicia's side. She is going to want Maddy's help (or, at the very least, her noninterference). This is the foundation she is laying to make Maddy inclined to give it.

The stories, at first, all seem to be centered on Commander Taylor and are tinged with just enough of a hint of hero worship to make Maddy discount them. Alicia is painting a picture of the man as capable of doing something that will break up the status quo of their lives. Alicia gives every appearance of believing it herself, so Maddy understands that it is not merely propaganda for the sake of propaganda, but that doesn't make it any more compelling. If there is one thing that she knows she knows at this point, it is that you cannot put your trust in people. Something will always happen that leads to them letting you down (even if that something happens to not be their fault).

So instead of the desired effect, which she is fairly certain runs something along the lines of her getting a complex and looking to the man as some sort of a savior who is going to come rushing in to free the colony from its occupiers, Alicia's stories do the opposite. If anything, she finds herself feeling sorry for the grown woman (the one who should know better by now).

She should know that hopes like that cannot be maintained. She should know that you have to do for yourself. She should know that you cannot wait for someone to come running in to save the day because _someone_ is not coming. Something always stops them.

Maddy kind of hates that her internal dialogue sounds so cynical - that she is so far down this path away from where she used to be that those are the words that come to her mind when she hears the things that Alicia is saying without coming right out and saying them. She can't help it; that's where she is. She doesn't know how to walk it back. She isn't certain that she even wants to try. It won't do her any good to be more trusting or more inclined to believe in deus ex machina moments.

She knows the truth - her parents aren't coming for her; they can't. In the same way, Taylor is likely not coming for Alicia or any of the others that have been left behind under the control of the Phoenix Group. Something (more than likely Lucas related) will intervene long before that becomes a valid possibility.

Maddy listens anyway.

Alicia is smart enough to recognize that her original idea is not working and resourceful enough to redirect smoothly. Maddy soon finds herself enmeshed in a different kind of story. These are not ones that are tinged with hero worship and not ones dedicated to some obscure philosophical tribute to the way things used to be. These are simple stories (domestic and mundane even) - ones that feature the other people that populated Terra Nova when it was their dream of something better that brought them through the portal. They are the stories of the people that are still here - the ones trapped behind the gates. They are little glimpses of those under the rule of the people for whom they did not ask and from whom they cannot get away.

Maddy has a much harder time trying to ignore those stories. Alicia knows it. She keeps telling them, and Maddy keeps listening because she is intrigued in spite of herself (or maybe because of herself and the part of her deep down that still wants to mend and solve and believe in better).

These stories resonate. These people had lives and families and futures before a group of people came in unasked and upended their worlds. Maddy can relate to that. Maddy does relate to that.

Maddy can't help but listen (and she can't seem to keep herself from starting to care).


	14. Chapter 14

Disclaimer: _Terra Nova_ is not mine.

Sometimes, Alicia asks questions that are not leading or prompts or any of the things which she has become used to hearing. These are sincere ones (at least ones that feel sincere from Maddy's perspective). These questions feel like the woman has taken a step back from her story telling and creation of backup plans - like something has genuinely just occurred to her that she feels like she needs to ask. So on the day that the woman wonders out loud how old she is, Maddy finds herself answering - the simple version of the answer at any rate.

She says the first words that come to mind - that she doesn't know. Then, she continues working without bothering to check the expression on Alicia's face. She doesn't feel like going into the ins and outs of why it is that she does not know. She does not bother to vocalize the concept of losing track of time in confinement. She does not mention the days that were never really even or the times that she knows she was drugged and has no way of telling how long they kept her under. Something tells her that it is more than likely that she does not need to explain those concepts to the woman who is doing the asking.

Alicia does something unexpected (or maybe if Maddy had thought about it harder it might not seem so out of place). She offers information. She gives Maddy the date - not part of the dating system that they use on the records here in the lab. That is some bizarre construct of Lucas's invention that marks time from some point of significance to him. She gives the actual, legitimate date (or what it would be if they were still on the other side of the portal). Maddy has no reason to believe that the offering is anything other than accurate. She lets the thought process filter its way through her mind before allowing one more unguarded comment to pass her lips.

"I'm sixteen then," she says softly. "I guess that's good to know."

Alicia's talking is not the only change that occurs in the aftermath of Maddy's request for assistance. After the stories have settled into their pattern, there comes one more introduction into Maddy's life - someone who by his bearing and stance (and the way that he is always half watched out of the corner of their eyes by the members of the Phoenix Group) leaves Maddy sure that he was a part of the military contingent in this place back in their before. He is young - not as young as Maddy but obviously significantly younger than Alicia.

Maddy is not sure why the introduction is made. She can speculate. It may be that they think she will respond better to someone who is closer to her own age. It may be (given that she now knows how old Maddy is) that Alicia is hoping for some sort of a teenage crush situation that they can maneuver to their advantage. The boy . . . man . . . definitely old enough to be considered a man . . . and he was obviously a professional before this all occurred (so man seems to be the appropriate appellation) is attractive from an objective point of view. She would recognize him as such if Maddy was paying attention to such things (which she kind of is but only because it is in her nature to observe).

From the way that he does not really talk or force himself on her notice while she spots him ever increasingly often in the background, she gets the impression that Alicia has done something along the lines of providing her with an extra bodyguard. Part of her wants to rail against that. As if she isn't already in someone's custody? As if she isn't already being watched nearly every moment of every day of her life? Another part of her still manages to find it somewhat sweet (because she knows even without the words being spoken between them just how little Alicia trusts the members of the Phoenix Group). She can tell that the woman does not have a great deal of faith in Lucas Taylor's ability to keep control over this place and the people that are aiding him in holding it. Maddy decides to say nothing - it is not as though saying anything ever gets her what she wants anyway, and she is not entirely certain what it is she would want if she had a choice in this particular instance. She lets it be, and she tries with ever increasing levels of failure to maintain emotional and mental distance from the subjects of the stories that Alicia is still telling her.

It is an implied fact that they want to get her out of this place. Maddy is not, in principle, opposed to this idea. It was not her choice to be here. It was not her choice to be doing finish work on Lucas Taylor's projects and running equations for Dr. Yibbets. It is, however, not her choice to be a tool to wield in the hands of the other side either. She does recognize that the other side, at least, has higher odds of letting her dictate terms.

It does not seem as if they are very close to following any course of action toward smuggling her out anyway - until suddenly they are. Dr. Yibbets is actually on site for once, and Lucas has been OTG for more than a day in some sort of a surveying venture when it happens. She does not see the streak across the sky that is their only warning (it is Dr. Yibbets who mentions it to her in the initial aftermath). She is, in fact, still in her room rather than on her way to the lab when the wave rattles the house.

There is a short silence followed by a lot of yelling - most of it indistinguishable as separate words and phrases. Part of her head is focused on the mess of shattered glass that covers the floor of the kitchen and living area of the house. Another part of her brain is tracking what must have happened as almost a commentary on the situation running over the top of everything else that she is thinking. An EMP must have occurred in the aftermath of the meteor strike. How much of the equipment in the colony is shielded for such a contingency is information that she does not have, but the change in the ambient sound around her and the tone of the yelling in the distance is implying to her that it is precious little.

Dr. Yibbets barks at her to stay put as she goes flying out the door in the direction of the lab, and Maddy quickly pushes down her natural curiosity and desire to see more closely what is happening.

She is not truly surprised several hours later (with no word from Dr. Yibbets or anyone else) to hear the tap at her window that reveals Reynolds to be waiting for her with a pack strapped to his back and whispered instructions for her to grab certain items and come quickly. Part of her bristles at the confirmation of yet another group that simply expects her to comply quietly with whatever they demand of her, but the instructions are accompanied by one small difference. "Please, Maddy," he adds at the end. "This is the best chance you have of getting out of here."

She could muster up some grounds for argument with that, but she finds that she does not want to do so. That she has to have somewhere to run to has been the underlying sticking point through all of her plans. They are offering her somewhere to go. She knows what staying entails and leaving is a white wall of unidentified variables. She throws together the bag as instructed and climbs out the window. They have never so much as bothered with offering her family or even information pertaining to them as bargaining chips. She is in a repetitive loop with no signs of change being forthcoming. Unidentified variables might be exactly what she needs.

It is strangely easy to slide from corner to corner and evade the eyes of those who are patrolling (perhaps because there seems to be a certain disregard of the usual standards in the face of the unexpected occurrence and the current lack of leadership present to redeploy new parameters). It is then that she realizes just how little depth the majority of the people at Lucas's command have. They aren't very adaptive (or, at least, they are not very adaptive in short time frames).

That is something that she is going to have to keep in mind for future planning. Right now, however, she needs her focus on other things - like the things that will be lurking in the coming darkness that will not hesitate to eat her and what will happen to her if they do manage to make it to wherever it is that Reynolds is taking her.


	15. Chapter 15

Disclaimer: _Terra Nova_ is not mine.

Maddy simply cannot keep up with him. She does not know exactly how quickly he would be moving without her in tow, but she suspects that it would be at least twice as fast as the pace he originally tries to set for her - the one that he abandons after what feels to her like hours but is likely more in the realm of fifteen minutes.

He is not being inconsiderate, but he does want them to put distance between themselves and the compound (the more distance the better and the sooner that distance can be gained even better still).

Maddy understands the rationale. She knows that the success of whatever plan they have (whatever that ultimately may be) requires lead time between her and any pursuers that may be dispatched when her absence is noted. The confusion in the compound may buy them some time and send her recovery sliding further down the priority list, but they cannot count on that indefinitely.

She is trying, but this is beyond her. Walking through underbrush over uneven terrain is completely foreign to anything she has ever done in her life and there are certain scientific principles that are working against her with every step forward that she takes. She grew up in a crowded city with crowded streets in an environment that hardly encouraged walking for pleasure. The distance between her home and the transit stop for her commute to school (walking this being the only outdoor activity in which she ever regularly participated) was less than a block. When you factored in the fact that her only exercise of any sort other than mental in these last few years consisted in the trip between place she slept and place she worked and back again, it was hardly surprising that the muscle tone necessary for her current endeavor was just not in existence.

Further, the only thing she has ever done is walk. She has never run or jogged or even really intentionally quickened her forward pace in any significant way. This is a level of activity for which her system has no point of reference and it is showing.

He doesn't snap at her when he cuts back his pace that first time (and claims her bag from her before attaching it to his own). He doesn't issue any words of admonition when he slows again not very long after. His behavior doesn't change in a manner to display that he is getting frustrated with her (when she knows that he must be because she is frustrated with herself). She can see, though, that there is a level of concern visible in his eyes that increases in inverse proportion to each decrease in their pace. He is worried - whether that they are not going to make it to some planned rendezvous point or that they just are not putting enough distance between themselves and their point of origin, she does not know (she is not exactly privy to even a general outline of this plan let alone the details).

She can almost see the wheels turning as he rearranges things in his head to accommodate this development, and she tries to push herself harder only to have it cemented for her that you truly can only work within the confines of the materials at your disposal.

She does not know exactly what will happen if they are caught. She imagines that a return to her normal cycle of "work" with a few more imposed restrictions would await her, but there is a streak of vindictiveness that she has observed in Lucas (along with an enjoyment of getting at people through the people around them) that makes her shudder at the thought of what might await Reynolds (with concern for Alicia rolling over her shortly thereafter). This should inspire her to move faster, but she doesn't have anything else to give (and she can see the moment when he glances over at her and knows that).

He says something to her involving the word clicks as he glances up at the sky that is rapidly shifting from dusk to full darkness. She appreciates that he is trying to include her in the thought processes behind his decision making, but the words are sort of lost on her. She knows what they mean in an academic sense, but she has no practical application to which she can apply them. She does not know how far they should be. She does not know how far they are supposed to be going.

She can tell from his glances at the sky that the lack of light is becoming his most pressing concern. She knows a myriad number of reasons for why that might be, but she also knows that knowing what might be wandering around out here in the dark is different than _knowing_ what might be wandering around out here in the dark.

She takes her cues from him because she knows when she should bow to someone else's expertise. If this day has taught her anything, it is how completely out of her depth she is. She is not ready for this - this jungle with its wildlife that wants to eat her and the vegetation that reaches out to trip her as she walks. She knows she is dependent on Reynolds in this scenario, and she is distinctly uncomfortable with that (she is distinctly uncomfortable with being dependent on anyone). She trusts Reynolds as much as she trusts anyone these days - meaning that she honestly believes that he isn't going to abandon her to become a chew toy for something carnivorous, but that is about as far as it truly goes.

She understands (again in principle) why he has stopped in front of the tree, but she still finds herself staring at him blankly when he tells her that she is going to need to climb. Tree climbing is yet another one of those things for which she knows the theory but has no practical experience (where in any of her befores would she ever have climbed a tree). She knows that this is physics (leverage versus gravity when you got right down to it), but the realities of science have not been her friend since she left the compound behind. She can feel the burning ache in her legs. She knows that her hands spend their days holding writing implements and scrolling through pages on plex screens. The callouses on her fingers are from circuit boards, soldering, and other fine motor skills that she employs on a daily basis. She will never be able to pull herself up from level to level. It is not going to happen.

Before she can even make a start at trying to verbalize that, he is saying something which she later processes was the words "I am sorry for the rudeness." His hands move from place to place pushing and lifting her by turns as they somehow make their way up the tree together until she finds herself sitting down on a branch without an entirely clear picture of how it was she got there.


	16. Chapter 16

Disclaimer: _Terra Nova_ is not mine.

Maddy and Reynolds have settled an adequate distance off the ground. She, at least, hopes that it is an adequate distance and not merely Reynolds giving in to the fact that she is practically useless in this climbing situation and short changing their upward progress. She has never been in a tree before, but the tree itself does not seem so bad. She has a back rest in the form of the trunk, the branch underneath her is wide enough that she does not feel that her perch is completely precarious, and she does not even hear it creak under her weight. She figures that is about the best that she can hope for given the current circumstances.

They are, apparently, planning to stay here just long enough to wait out the darkness before continuing their trek. She should be using this opportunity to rest, but Maddy is very certain that actual sleeping is not going to be a part of this break in travel. She and Reynolds do not really speak at first beside the obligatory question from him about whether she is all right (with the equally obligatory response from her stating that she is fine).

He seems content with the quiet as he gazes out over their surroundings in a pattern that she recognizes as his attempt to keep watch as best he can from his position in the tree. The word sheepdog pushes itself forward in her mind, and she sees no reason to quibble with the label her observations have supplied. That is exactly what he is. This man that has pushed and pulled her up a tree after guiding (herding) her through all of the potential pitfalls of this jungle is a sheepdog. He is a protector at his heart. Maddy understands that in the same way that she had instinctively understood that he would have stood between her and whatever dangers they might have encountered on their path.

She cannot decide whether this should make her feel comforted or encourage her to be even more cautious. She is his mission at the moment, but she isn't really one of his sheep as it were. He has loyalties, and she is certain that he will follow them. He is going to deliver her to people who want something from her. In that, they are no different than Lucas and those who are bankrolling him. She likes Alicia (and Reynolds for that matter) as much as she lets herself like anyone these days, and she is sure that they believe that whatever they are going to ask of her is the "right thing." The problem with that is that she is equally sure that Lucas and his background shadows believe the same thing.

Maddy does not want to be a pawn any longer (she cringes at the internal phrasing as it implies that she ever wanted to be a pawn at any point). She does not want to be in the middle of a control war in an alternate dimension. She wants her family. She wants them together. She wants them to have a home. She doesn't get to have what she wants right now. She has to work with what she has - which is essentially being stuck between two wolves in a territory battle.

The fact that they were not the ones that put her into indentured servitude in the first place does count in the Taylor Senior faction's favor, but that does not mean she is going to offer any blind trust. Her head hurts (and not just because she hurts all over at this point).

She would like to let her brain rest from processing for two seconds together, but she does not have that luxury (hasn't had such a luxury for such a long time). Her thoughts, however, do turn to focus in another direction as the break from physical activity continues. She starts to truly process exactly where she is. She has known, of course, but she has been too busy trying to move to really think it through up until now.

The scurrying movements in the underbrush below them combined with the occasional calls of what can only by hunting packs are what finally click the totality of the truth into place in her head. There are things down there (many, many things) that would like nothing better than to make a meal of her. The only thing between her and them is the difference in height. It is surreal and disturbing. She is grateful for the tree, and she soon finds herself grateful for the deepening darkness as well. The tree provides protection, but it also provides perspective. The darkness hides that perspective. It keeps just how much space is truly around her from her view. She needs that because she has discovered something in her time of mental processing since they have stopped for the night.

She kind of wishes that she hadn't gotten so used to the ache in her limbs because it isn't nearly as distracting as it was at the beginning and no longer distracts her from the fact that she is out in the open. There are no walls here hemming her in place. There are no fences marking out boundaries for her. There are only open spaces in a way that she has never experienced them before (not even in her before before).

She has discovered that she does not know how to be out in the open. There is a flickering in her chest that she understands to be a textbook indication of the beginnings of a panic attack. She sucks in a deep breath and pushes back as hard as she can against the feeling. That is not going to happen. That will not be her future. She will not give them the satisfaction of having ruined her. They will not have turned her into an agoraphobic who will be grateful for their confinement because she no longer knows how to function without it. She will not let it. That declaration, however, is easier made than kept. She decides that an exterior distraction would not go amiss at this juncture. She decides to do what she does best - she starts to ask questions.

Reynolds obliges her and even seems to realize that his original clipped (but accurate) responses are not what she wants. She doesn't know how she sounds (what vulnerabilities she may be betraying in her voice that might later be used against her). He gives her somewhat lengthy sketches on the wildlife around them that sound as if they might have been memorized from some sort of a field guide, and she thinks that he might suspect enough of what she is feeling to be engaging in some sort of a know what you fear so you fear it less campaign. In other circumstances, she might applaud the maneuver. It is not working for her right now. It is only making the open seem bigger and her knowledge seem smaller in comparison. She isn't processing the new information the way she usually would because she is spending too much of her focus on trying to breathe deeply enough that she keeps the swirling panic at bay. She doesn't know what he hears. She doesn't know what he sees. She does know when his tone changes.

Something about the new tone reaches in and snags her focus. He isn't talking about things or even ideas now. He is talking about him - specifically his childhood. He speaks of calculators and hiding under tables. His tone speaks of a dreaming child with odd habits, and the familiarity of it draws her focus out of herself. By the time he uses the phrase "lunar accountant," the knot of panic in her chest has stabilized. She is so caught up in his words that she doesn't even register the point at which it has completely faded away.


	17. Chapter 17

Disclaimer: _Terra Nova_ is not mine.

It was Reynolds who guided her through the wilderness and push/pulled her up the tree that evening. When he helps her down from the tree at the first hints of daylight the next morning, he is Mark in her head. The transition from Reynolds to Mark did literally occur overnight, but Maddy finds that she cannot be surprised by that given the circumstances. She cannot seem to maintain that internal distance from her traveling companion after the man spent the night telling her stories of his childhood to help walk her back from the edge of a panic attack (one that she can still feel hovering around the edges of her awareness waiting for her to have a weak moment so that it can push itself forward once again). She knows things about him now. That has always been her weakness - knowing things. It remains to be seen how much of a liability that weakness is going to become for her.

Alicia, after all, has always been Alicia despite Maddy's hesitance to align herself with her cause. Dr. Yibbets, on the other hand, has always been Dr. Yibbets. Part of Maddy is grateful that the maintained distance and lack of the truly personal on the woman's part has always been the status quo - it kept her from having to struggle with anything like having to see her visible captors as other than cogs in the gears. Dealing with Lucas being Lucas in her head (because he is verbose on the subject of his perceived ills and Maddy's brain relentlessly files information even when she is not giving the sounds around her her actual attention) is enough for her to try to handle.

Every time she thinks that she has regained her equilibrium (that she has found her footing with who she is and how she responds) with the cynicism about people that still feels like an oversized piece of hand me down clothing in which she has wrapped herself, something like this happens that shows her that she does not have her balance at all. She does not know if she ever will.

Everything feels out of control. This is not a new feeling for her, but she has always had something to grasp in order to help keep herself steady. Planning ,searching, ideas, theories, even what might be considered petty annoyances that she unleashed upon the building as a whole while she was trapped on the other side of the portal - these were all things that helped to keep her grounded.

This is not the same.

None of the little things apply here. The small victories that she used to be able to consider effort well spent are lost to her in this never ending seeming open space around her filled with constant reminders of how out of her niche she is. In her before, before, she would have drowned herself in research until she felt she had at least a functional relationship with the previously unknown, but she cannot do that here. The time for preparing is not an option; she's going to have to learn as she goes. She hates not being prepared. She needs something she can control.

In her evaluation of the options available to her, she decides not to correct herself at Mark's new appellation in her interior monologue. This is something that she can choose. She can let herself let him be Mark. She can choose to believe that this man is a good guy because he has done absolutely nothing to show her otherwise. He is someone who is doing the best he can to defend his home and take care of his family. She can empathize with that in stark contrast with Lucas who seems to want nothing more than to burn the remnants of his family ties to ash.

It feels like she is not the only one for whom things have shifted after their night in the tree. Mark is still not what could be considered chatty by any means, but he seems to have made the decision to keep telling her things as they move. She discovers that he does not know precisely where it is that they are going. He has an idea of a general area where they are most likely to run into patrols that he is certain his commander has set. That is where he is leading her. She finds that they don't have any steady current method of communication between those still within the walls and those without. Mark is operating on knowledge of contingency plans that had been set in place to deal with natural emergencies (not an invasion of hostile forces). What he does not say is what he intends to do if they do not stumble upon the people for whom they are looking. Maddy doesn't ask.

He does not push her to keep moving when she pauses at the edge of what used to be a field full of a variation on day lilies that have been decimated by the aftermath of the strike. She lets herself have a minute to think that she would have liked to have seen it in better circumstances - it must have been breathtaking. She even finds herself with the corners of her lips tugging upwards when her companion rattles off some random facts involving the flora because it reminds her so much of what she is sure she used to sound like when she tried to throw information into the abyss of trying to not be awkward with other people (that somehow always made things more awkward). She acknowledges his statements with a nod (she isn't quite ready to let the smile actually happen), and they keep moving.

The day gives way to a second night in a tree, and the talking comes more naturally through the hazy, nearing exhausted buzz that has settled in her head.

Mark isn't the only one talking about his childhood by the time that she drifts into a pattern of slight dozing followed by startled reentries to complete awareness. (She's pretty sure she would have gone tumbling off the branch during one of those interludes if Mark hadn't helped secure her in place with a cord that he produced from the depths of his bag.)

Maddy is strangely comfortable in a way that makes her slightly uncomfortable in her comfortableness. She is still tired and achy. She knows that she was not built for this kind of travel, but she feels safer than she has for a long time. Despite the fact that part of her brain is insisting that feeling safe is the surest way to ensure that she ends up not safe at all, she decides not to fight it. She knows that Mark is not going to let anything eat her, and she is starting to believe that that includes the wolves that are circling around her from both sides. Maybe she is one of his sheep after all. Maybe he can't help himself. Maybe everyone in need of protection that he encounters is granted it to the best of his ability.

She doesn't know, but she'll take it.

They keep walking and just when she thinks that a third night in a tree is about to be upon them (and wonders if she is truly exhausted enough by now for that to include actual sleeping rather than just drifting), something changes. Mark's tension level skyrockets and she has been pushed into cover behind him while he scans the area around them with renewed focus before she processes what is happening. He trills out a sound that mimics an animal call - the answer is nearly instantaneous. There are other people around them, and then there are even more people. She is tired, sore, and fuzzy headed, and she isn't sure that she is even properly filing the things happening in her periphery away for later processing.

The man in front of whom they come to a stop stands out clearly in the midst of the muddle (with his military bearing and what her mother would call distinguished looks), but what stands out more are the words that she hears Mark utter.

"I've brought you a present, Sir."


	18. Chapter 18

Disclaimer: _Terra Nova_ does not belong to me.

That tendency toward panic over being out in the open has its best chance to overtake her in that moment. She is momentarily reeling, and she half expects to feel the jaggedness creep into her breathing as she stands there. It does not. Nothing of the sort happens. Everything around her may be temporarily fuzzy, but panic is not the emotional state in which she finds herself. Ultimately, it is no match for the intensity of another feeling that is swallowing up everything else in its path.

She is angry with a side of betrayal, and Mark is not the object at whom those feelings are directed. She is angry at herself and feeling betrayed by the intelligence that she has always been told that she possesses. What is wrong with her? She should know better by now. How many times does life have to bludgeon her with the reality that she should not trust people before it finally makes its way through her head? And here she had been thinking that she had become too cynical. Obviously, she hasn't become nearly enough so. If she had, then she would not be standing here trying to keep control of her facial expressions. She would have been naturally nonchalant because this would have been exactly what she was expecting to have happen.

She knew that she was being brought here for a purpose, but she had really thought that Mark cared at least somewhat for her well-being. The tone in which he had spoken as if she was an object being handed over had drawn figurative blood. She was so, so sick of being nothing more than everyone's means to an end.

A rustling sound pierces through her thoughts, and she realizes that Mark is not looking at her the way that she would expect if he is presenting her to his commanding officer. He is, instead, digging through the interior of his backpack (the one that he had carried of hers is laying temporarily abandoned beside where he is kneeling). He is smiling when he looks up as he pulls the boxy hunk of metal from its depths, but the smile fades when he makes eye contact with her. It disappears from his eyes first and then slowly the corners of his mouth turn down as if it took them an extra moment to get the message from his brain. (She finally truly understands that saying about an expression sliding off of someone's' face.)

He blinks at her with eyes that look momentarily confused before changing to something that looks vaguely reproachful and somewhat horrified all at the same time. She knows that means that her attempt at guarding her expression failed, but she does not know what it is that he has to look reproachful or horrified about.

"Maddy, no," he tells her in a tone that sounds almost pleading. "That's not what I meant." A throat clearing redirects his attention, but his eyes keep darting back to her like he is tempted to ignore the interruption. "It's the chip replicator," he says to the man whose eyebrow is raised in question (and Maddy's not sure that that question is about the device being offered to him either), "the small one that they take out to the research stations when they need to do repairs. Dr. Wallace didn't think that they would notice it was missing what with all of the confusion."

He still looks a little hurt when he turns toward Maddy. "That's the present," he tries to reassure her.

There is a part of Maddy that wants to feel badly for thinking the worst, but she is digging in her heels. It doesn't really matter. They are still going to want something from her. That's how people are. She just has to find a way to work with that. She, after all, also wants something from them. She needs to figure out a way to bargain (and she needs to do it quickly).

"Is that even working?" She hears the question and tunes back in to what is going on in front of her. This is not the time for her to only pay half attention. These are new variables, and she needs to assess and learn them.

"Not at present, sir," Mark is saying. "That's why I've also brought you this." He produces a chip in a protective case from one of his pockets and hands it over. "That is one hand crafted replacement for the chip that runs the replicator."

"Where did that come from?" The question seems to make Mark look oddly uncomfortable. "Well?"

"Washington said to tell you," Mark's voice drops in volume as if he is hoping that the other's Maddy can see gathered in a politely distanced but still visible circle around them won't hear, "that you know exactly who crafted it. You should . . . um . . . not grumble about it and a thank you later won't kill you. Sir." He adds hastily at the end.

"It might," the man quips instantly but there is a soft chuckle that accompanies it, and Maddy hasn't had enough time to observe yet to tell whether that is a good sound or a bad sound. "Your traveling companion looks exhausted, Reynolds. Have Reilly get her settled in for a nap or something, and then you and I will talk."

"No." The word is out so fast that Maddy doesn't realize that she is the one that said it until all of the eyes in the vicinity snap in her direction. This - words coming out of her mouth before she can stop them - used to be familiar ground. She has gotten out of the habit for the most part, but she had decided that she needed to take a stand. This is as good of a place to start as any. "If you are going to be talking about me, then I think I ought to be present," she adds.

The gaze is assessing for several beats, but Maddy refuses to let her eyes shift to the ground. "Fair enough," he nods before turning his attention back to Mark. To Maddy's surprise, the conversation does not immediately turn to her. It would seem that the commander has bigger problems on his plate than the appearance of Maddy Shannon on his figurative doorstep. (That or he is intentionally avoiding asking Mark why she is here just to make her wait.)

She files away what she is hearing as best as she can. She really is exhausted, and the burst of anger that had burned away at the haziness of the fatigue has left her. She refocuses her attention more sharply when they start to discuss the portal which has, apparently, also been shut down by the EMP. She cannot help but wonder why something that important would not have been hardened against such a contingency, but that does not seem to be something that they have done with any of the equipment here. She needs to know about the portal (exhausted or not) - her family is still back on the other side of it.

"They're going to send reinforcements. We may not know exactly who we are dealing with, but they obviously have deep enough pockets that overwhelming us with numbers isn't going to be a problem for them. At least with the portal running, we know where they are entering. We can monitor the situation. A malfunctioning portal doesn't stop people from coming through it. I . . . uh . . . learned that the hard way once."

Maddy thinks as quickly as she can under the circumstances (which means she's going to have to be a little bit impulsive). Lucas never offered her anything she really wanted. Maddy's wants had never even been on the table. This could be different. These people could be different. She can position herself so that they have to be. If she can control the portal . . . .

"Maybe not," Maddy starts in a tone that is little more than a whisper. Taylor Senior apparently heard her in spite of that because his eyes are instantly shifted in her direction. "Maybe not," she repeats with a little more volume and a lot more strength of conviction in her voice. She's choosing a path - at least for now. "Just stopping the portal doesn't work because that just leaves the path open," she continues. "You have to use the portal to stop the path."


	19. Chapter 19

Disclaimer: _Terra Nova_ is not mine.

These are allies. Maddy reassures herself of that as she travels through the unknown of the open with the team that has been assigned to her. It is not as though she is going to make any declarations toward clarification of that point out loud - she is just reminding herself that the people with whom she is out in the open are at least nominally trustworthy. The senior Taylor is wary of her even though he has never been anything less than polite. She does not fault him for that (she actually finds it rather encouraging) because she feels the same way about him. She is an unknown quantity for them, and she is not one of his people. She would feel like he was attempting to snow her if she was suddenly welcomed into his inner circle with open arms.

Mark is one of his people and Alicia likewise. It is on the strength of what she would term (for lack of any better description) the character testimony provided by the two of them conspiring to bring her here that her presence is tolerated. She had not been within the boundaries of their camp for more than ten minutes when Maddy realized that she was not even making the list of the commander's top concerns. He had bigger problems to worry about than a teenage girl with a penchant for math and engineering being escorted to his doorstep (not that there is anything remotely resembling a door in the encampment that seems to be designed to move quickly and frequently). It had been Maddy's first order of business to change his mind about that.

Mark had volunteered (because of course he had) when it had been decided that it was worth sending Maddy out to the portal to see if she really could do as she claimed. He had been denied. He was back at the site of the camp being debriefed for whatever information on the Phoenix Group and everything going on back at the settlement which he could provide. It is Taylor who leads the group with which she is traveling. She knows that the woman's name is Reilly (as she was the one who settled Maddy in for the remainder of the night after the lengthy discussion when she first entered the camp). There are two others with them that have not spoken once during the entire trip. They appear to be well trained, and she can once again confidently proclaim that she does not worry about being left behind to be eaten. She does not, however, feel anywhere near as comfortable as she had gotten during her similar excursion with Mark. She is glad for that. She needs to keep her head as clear as possible (and she needs to stop getting so attached). The people still back in the settlement whose stories Alicia had related to her are still taking turns running through her head with worries for their safety and concerns for their long term well-being, and she needs to worry about making sure that she is in a position to work toward her own long term goals instead of getting constantly invested in people she barely knows (that's what she keeps telling herself).

No one steps out to confront them when they arrive at their destination, and Maddy gets to work while the others spread out to keep an eye on the surroundings and her at the same time.

All of the exercises that she has completed in the time that she has been separated from her family have paid off in the sense that the interior circuitry of the portal arch is nothing but familiar under her fingers. The paths and pieces read like a map to her, and it actually takes less time than she thought it would to see exactly what she needs to do to make it respond in the way that she wishes. (It may be that she has spent so long working deliberately more slowly than she needs to that she has also forgotten how quickly she can tackle a problem when she does not ratchet herself down.)

The newly manufactured chips (it turns out that the portal actually requires three of them to function correctly) are inserted and reprogrammed before the anxiously scanning the vicinity around them patrol has time to cross over from slightly anxious to truly disturbed. They did not think that they would see no one. They had expected an altercation. The specifics had not been made clear to Maddy, but she had known that a conflict of some sort had been predicted.

"How will we know if it's working?"

Maddy bites her lip because she kind of wants to justify herself with a detailed description of what it was that she just accomplished, but she refrains. "It will," she says simply thinking that she has just closed off her means of getting back to wherever the rest of her family is now. She reminds herself again that this is temporary. She can open it back up (will open it back up when it is time). Part of her wishes that she had just replaced the chips and rushed herself through before they realized what she was doing, but what would she have done once she was across? Run directly into the people who had sent her here in the first place? Gotten sent right back to work for them? Been eliminated because they decided she wasn't enough of an asset any longer?

Shutting it down was the best she could do for right now. She needed time. She needed leverage. She needed a chance to work out the details. She was buying herself that.

The commander looks at her skeptically, and she shrugs her shoulders. "You've got no reason to trust me," she admits. "But I've got no reason to want that portal to be letting people through at the moment. You need time to work without the Phoenix Group getting reinforcements. I need time to make my own goals plausibly attainable. I'm going to want that portal functioning at some point in the future, but today is not that day."

She waits for a response. She's telling him the truth. She's not joining up for his cause. She's not opposed to helping him (or more truthfully helping the people back in the settlement that have had their lives turned upside down and are living under an invading force), but she has her own agenda. It's what she can offer at the moment. He strikes her as the type that will appreciate her being upfront about that.

It turns out that she hasn't read him incorrectly.

"So that's where we are," he tells her with a slight incline of his head.

"So that's where we are," she agrees.


	20. Chapter 20

Disclaimer: _Terra Nova_ is not mine.

They kept an eye on the portal even while they ran chips from the replicator as quickly as they could. Then, they worked on a strategy for taking back the settlement. Maddy did not participate in that planning (knows she has little she could have added to the picture Mark painted for them even if she had been included). She kept getting sent off to the edges to do basic survival training with Reilly (which she couldn't really object to because she knew that it was knowledge that she needed to have - it was interesting even as well as useful).

They also insisted that she be given as complete of a physical as they could with the mobile equipment at their disposal (which turned out to be a fairly thorough scanning of her overall state of health). It did not reveal anything that she found surprising. The medic, however, tutted over her in a disconcerted manner, and she heard whispered comments to Taylor that included phrases about lack of muscle tone and the potential long term effects of subsistence diets during early adolescence. She knew all of that already. It was nothing for which she wasn't already formulating a plan.

She wasn't malnourished; she had just been on a very restricted caloric intake for an extended period of time. She may or may not have lost a smidgeon of overall height in the process, but there should not be anything else that cannot be recovered from with time and some effort (maybe a lot of effort if she ever wants something like that hike through the wild to be a taken in stride sort of a thing). In the grand scheme of things, the intention to keep her weak (if it even was that and not sheer lack of concern in general) doesn't register highest in the ranking of bad things that have happened to her. Given that, she could do without the looks she interprets as pity from the medic or the ever assessing and somehow knowing looks she catches from the commander. It's a good thing that she's good at choosing to ignore odd looks (she had to do that even before before) or she might find them distracting enough to be annoying.

She has a little more trouble dismissing the slightly guilt tinged gaze she catches at times from Mark. She doesn't know exactly what he was told. (Is medical privacy still a thing in these circumstances?) She would like to ask him what it is he has to feel guilty about. Did he think he should have carried her all the way? That would hardly have been practical.

It took three days for them to decide that they were confident enough in her "fix" of the portal and in their own outline of a plan to make a move for the settlement. The outline of the plan became worthless before they even reached the gates.

The settlement was not deserted, but it was deserted by the people they were prepared to find. The Phoenix Group did not appear (either when they were scouting from a distance or when they actually arrived at the gates). The commander had been extremely cautious throughout the whole process - even when they had seen some sort of a sign from Alicia that was supposed to be interpreted as an all clear. Or, at least, that is what she has heard. All of that had been settled long before Maddy was brought back anywhere near the place. She has gathered bits and pieces which she has strung together into a solid semblance of the story (she supposes that she could have tried asking, but why when she can work it out for herself).

The Phoenix Group (along with Lucas) is simply gone. No one seems to know exactly what had set off the round of frantic packing, but the inability to replace the materials damaged by the EMP had had the original colonists stepping lightly trying to not draw any of their ill-tempered attention for days. It had taken Lucas two days to make it back from wherever he had been when the meteor struck, and the welcoming committee upon his return had been a little less welcoming and a little more in the realm of disgruntled shouting. Some sort of a deadline had apparently been missed - Alicia was fairly confident that it had been a set time that raw materials were due to be sent back through the portal. There had been more sniping back and forth, a lengthy series of threats about the nonfunctional chip replicator residing in the main lab space, more yelling when it was ascertained that Maddy was not where she was supposed to be (there was something they weren't telling her or letting her overhear about that particular altercation which Maddy thinks might mean that there had been a good chance of everyone involved in smuggling her out having not been as safe in the aftermath as they wanted her to believe).

They had expected (been counting on really) contact to be reinstated from the other side after their failure to meet their appointed delivery. That hadn't happened. The Phoenix Group (at Lucas's direction) had even run some grid pattern searches in the area that was generally considered the portal zone for uncontrolled trips, but they had returned empty handed and more distressed. Their disappearing act had been fait accompli before most of the residents had even realized that they were moving.

The Sixers had left at the same time, and the two groups seemed to be sticking with each other as best as the trackers who were sent out could tell. No one seemed to be particularly comfortable with all of the unknowns of the situation (except maybe Taylor who seemed to make being difficult to read his defining personality characteristic). He had asked her to explain to Malcolm what she had done, and she had complied in the general sense while avoiding the details (which got her a nod of the head that she thought might be interpreted as a sort of a "well played" acknowledgement). He didn't seem to be trying to find out how she had made it work so much as looking for an opinion from Malcolm as to whether anyone in Lucas's camp would be able to undo it. Malcolm didn't think so. Maddy didn't know the details of everyone at their disposal, but she was willing to risk a little bit on the fact that if they had someone else to do such things, then they wouldn't have needed her in the first place.

So there they were - in a sort of collective standoff while they all got their bearings.


	21. Epilogue

Disclaimer: _Terra Nova_ is not mine.

She likes everything about working in the lab. She thinks it is something that she would have chosen herself if things had been different. She sees no reason to allow unwanted outside influence to spoil that for her. She is going to keep it for herself despite the fact that it is what they wanted from her. She is good at the things required of her in the land of analysis and data and extrapolation - that is why they wanted her in the first place after all.

It is also practical for her to continue. She has to do something. This place works a bit like most of human history as far as Maddy can tell from her still admittedly small exposure to the settlement under its return to the commander's supervision - meaning that a lengthy transition between being a child and an adult is not really a thing. Maddy is seeing firsthand that the concept of teenager really only works in a place that is relatively comfortable and has leisure time at the majority of the population's disposal, and the world from which she had come (despite its extensive number of issues) still fell within those parameters. Here, if you can handle a job and take care of yourself, then you do. There are teenagers working jobs and sharing housing space with each other with nary an eyebrow raised, and Maddy is pleased to follow the precedent.

She, at sixteen, can meet those standards of holding a job and being responsible for her own well-being. Thus, there has been no discussion (at least to her knowledge) of fostering her with some family. This does not mean that there are not people around the colony who check up on those who are living on their own, but it is just that - checking in and not taking over. It works for her, and as long as she is working and remembering to feed herself, then it will keep working that way.

Malcolm talks to her a lot more now that someone threatening isn't looming in the background. They work on a lot of related projects in the labs and are casual chitchat friendly with each other. Malcolm talks science to her in a way that she isn't sure that she has ever really had before even while keeping a certain distance from personal matters. He never seems to notice when he slips up and asks her mother to hand him something or to check a calculation for him, and Maddy never brings it to his attention. She has seen his credentials - knows when and where he had gone to school. She can put the pieces together and read between the lines.

It is nice to know that there is someone else around who knows that her mother exists (even if he never intentionally verbalizes that knowledge). It's comforting. She soon finds that that comfort can come from a place as well as from a person. That place is commonly referred to by the people in the settlement as the Eye.

She spends copious amounts of time in the Eye starting from the moment that she first understands what it is. There's a sort of first come first serve sign up schedule for the place which is a repository for more information than she could access in multiple lifetimes (which begs the question of why - if Terra Nova was not really the second chance that was sold to the public, then why make it the warehouse for something like that). There are never very many people on the schedule, however, just the occasional research session or reminiscing person viewing old haunts via audio and visual files. There is almost always an open time slot when she wants one (which she can admit is as often as she can reasonably justify it to herself).

It feels good to view documents that have not been meddled with by Population Control. She starts with her brother's birth certificate even while she sighs over the fact that she knows that she will not be able to pull one up for Zoe (because, obviously, her little sister had never had legal paperwork to be archived). She rereads and rereads copies of her mother's academic journal articles from graduate school and tries to recreate the tones and timbre of her voice in her head as though she is sitting beside her reading them out loud. She even locates an article about a massive narcotics bust in which her father is repeatedly quoted that she can revisit while she remembers how he always gruffly complained about the nonsensical questions reporters around the station would ask.

These are digital records of her family's existence that remain despite the information purge on the other side of the portal - nothing has been tampered with here. She finds time in the Eye soothing and motivating, and it has nothing to do with the wide variety of knowledge at her disposal within its confines.

She spends time in the Eye, she works, and she chats with Malcolm. He is the one that mentions to her that the Phoenix Group and Sixer colonists had headed in the direction of some location referred to as the Badlands. This makes him nervous. She doesn't think that there is a thinking person in the entire colony that believes that their altercations are over, but Malcolm is especially concerned by their choice for a point of retreat. The Badlands, he had told her, was no place to set up a camp, and the Sixers would know that. This indicates to him that they have a deeper plot at their disposal, and he nods his head in a sort of a knowing manner whenever Alicia comes to pull her out of the lab for "girl talk."

In Alicia's world, this means survival training and self-defense lessons (she figures Malcolm knows this and approves given his concerns about the precariousness of their situation). She doesn't mind learning what Alicia has to teach her (and what she has to teach is quite extensive), and she grudgingly admits over the near constant complaints of her muscles that the running the older woman insists on becoming a part of her daily routine is a really good idea.

Then, there is Mark. Mark is just sort of always around - walking her home or carrying her groceries when he isn't leaving wildflowers on her doorstep for her to find. She doesn't know exactly how she feels about that except that she knows that she doesn't not like it.

She is building a life here or really a life is building itself around her, and she is finding that she is okay with that. She has goals and plans, but they require time. She is never going to stop working for and toward them, but she decides that living in the meantime isn't something that she is going to avoid.

* * *

AN: As we all know, this is how the season ends - portal not working and enemies in the Badlands. We're leaving off in the same place (different circumstances). Thank you to everyone who left me feedback along the way. Your comments make my day!


End file.
